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THE   STANDARD   OF 
PRONUNCIATION  IN  ENGLISH 


BY 


THOMAS    R.    LOUNSBURY 

Professor  of  English  in  Yale  University 


NEW  YORK   AND    LONDON 

HARPER  G-  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

1904 


Copyright,  1904,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

Aii  rights  reserved. 

Published  March,  1904. 


YE 
I  /  unuAnY 


TOVE!^-n^  OF  CAUFORJVW 


TO 

FRANCIS  ANDREW  MARCH 

PROFESSOR  OR  THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  AND 
OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY  IN  LAFAYETTE 
COLLEGE,  THIS  TREATISE  IS  DEDICATED  AS 
A  SLIGHT  TOKEN  OF  RESPECT  FOR  HIS  CHAR- 
ACTER AND    OF    ESTEEM    FOR    HIS    SCHOLARSHIP 


PREFACE 

The  idea  which  underUes  the  present 
essay  originally  constituted  the  subject 
of  an  address  delivered  at  Easton  in 
1895.  The  occasion  was  the  celebra- 
tion held  then  and  there  in  honor  of  the 
distinguished  scholar  to  whom  this  little 
work  is  dedicated.  At  that  time  only 
a  portion  was  given  of  the  illustrative 
material  which  had  been  brought  to- 
gether. At  a  still  later  period  additions 
were  made  to  the  address  as  originally 
prepared.  From  it  thus  enlarged  selec- 
tions were  printed  in  the  shape  of  two 
articles  which  appeared  in  Harper's 
Magazine  for  September  and  November, 
1903.  The  whole  treatise  is  now  in- 
cluded in  the  present  volume. 


PREFACE 

A  complete  list  of  the  words,  the  pro- 
nunciation of  which  has  for  any  reason 
received  consideration  in  the  body  of  the 
work,  can  be  found  at  the  end.  The 
number  of  these  is  large;  there  would 
have  been  no  difficulty  in  making  it  very 
much  larger.  In  no  case,  however,  have 
they  been  introduced  for  any  other  pur- 
pose than  to  illustrate  a  principle;  and  if 
those  given  fail  to  convince  the  reader 
of  the  truth  of  the  views  here  advanced, 
it  would  be  useless  to  multiply  examples. 
Pains  have  further  been  taken  to  select, 
whenever  possible,  words  in  regard  to 
which  exists  the  interest  of  present  con- 
troversy. About  the  propriety  or  im- 
propriety of  the  pronunciation  in  any 
given  case  no  judgment  is  expressed. 
My  office  has  been  to  record,  to  the  best 
of  my  knowledge,  differences  of  opinion 
and  of  practice  which  have  prevailed  in 
the  past  or  are  prevailing  now. 


THE  STANDARD  OF 
PRONUNCIATION  IN  ENGLISH 


THE  STANDARD  OF 
PRONUNCIATION  IN  ENGLISH 


I 


THE  first  serious  attempt  which  his- 
tory records  to  fix  a  standard  of 
pronunciation — the  first,  at  least,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware — took  place  in  Palestine 
more  than  a  thousand  years  before  the 
coming  of  Christ.  The  account  of  it 
is  given  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Judges.  The  men  of  Gilead 
had  just  overcome  the  children  of  Eph- 
raim  in  a  decisive  battle.  They  had 
furthermore  anticipated  their  defeated 
enemies  in  occupying  the  passages  of  the 
3 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Jordan.  "And  it  was  so,"  continues  the 
Bible  story,  "that  when  those  Eph- 
raimites  which  were  escaped  said,  Let 
me  go  over;  that  the  men  of  Gilead  said 
unto  him.  Art  thou  an  Ephraimite?  If 
he  said  Nay;  then  said  they  unto  him, 
Say  now  Shibboleth:  and  he  said  Sib- 
boleth:  for  he  could  not  frame  to  pro- 
nounce it  right.  Then  they  took  him, 
and  slew  him  at  the  passages  of  Jordan : 
and  there  fell  at  that  time  of  the  Eph- 
raimites  forty  and  two  thousand." 

It  cannot  be  decided  with  absolute  cer- 
tainty whether  the  forty-two  thousand 
Ephraimites  just  mentioned  included 
the  men  who  were  slain  in  the  preceding 
battle  or  consisted  exclusively  of  those 
who  failed  to  pass  satisfactorily  in  pro- 
nunciation at  the  examination  then  con- 
ducted at  the  passages  of  the  Jordan. 
In  the  discussion  of  the  present  question 
4 


PRONUNCIATION 

that  point  is  for  us  really  immaterial. 
The  moral  the  incident  enforces  is  quite 
independent  of  the  number  of  those 
who  perished  from  their  lack  of  con- 
formity to  the  Gileadite  view  of  or- 
thoepy. It  is  a  general  principle  that  is 
taught  by  it;  and  the  lesson  it  conveys 
is  just  as  applicable  to  the  present  time 
as  it  ever  was  to  the  past.  The  fate  which 
befell  the  Ephraimites  is  the  kind  of  fate 
which  in  our  secret  hearts  we  all  feel  to 
be  the  one  strictly  due  to  those  perverted 
and  perverse  beings  who  will  persist  in 
pronouncing  words  in  a  way  we  deem 
improper. 

Modern  sentimentalism  will  no  longer 
allow  us  to  resort  to  the  drastic  measures 
for  establishing  what  we  deem  correct 
usage  which  were  then  adopted  by  the 
men  of  Gilead.  Yet  unless  I  mistake 
entirely  the  nature  of  the  opinions  con- 

5 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

stantly  heard  in  conversation  and  ex- 
pressed in  print,  the  spirit  which  ani- 
mates the  latest  devotees  of  what  they 
consider  the  only  proper  pronunciation 
is  in  nowise  different  from  that  of  those 
who  more  than  three  thousand  years 
ago  set  up  a  test  of  their  own  in 
Palestine.  On  this  subject  men  con- 
tinue to  be  divided  now,  as  they  were 
then,  into  Gileadites  and  Ephraimites. 
Even  the  word  pronunciation  itself  has 
been  erected  into  a  shibboleth.  Some 
vigorously  insist  that  the  syllable  ci 
should  be  sounded  as  "she,"  others  just 
as  vigorously  insist  that  it  shall  be 
sounded  as  "se."  The  punishment  men 
visit  upon  those  who  fail  to  conform  to 
their  standard  is  necessarily  in  conso- 
nance with  the  spirit  of  the  times  to 
which  they  belong.  But  while  the  pen- 
alty varies,  the  feelings  which  prompt 
6 


PRONUNCIATION 

its  infliction  remain  in  all  ages  the  same. 
If  we  cannot  slay  the  Ephraimite,  we 
can  vituperate  him.  We  can  point  at 
him  the  finger  of  scorn;  we  can  uplift 
the  nose  of  derision ;  we  can  curl  the  lip 
of  contempt.  We  can  force  upon  his 
consciousness  a  general  sense  of  social 
and  intellectual  inferiority  which  wealth 
cannot  condone  and  station  will  make 
only  the  more  conspicuous. 

Modem  philanthropy,  which  lets  noth- 
ing escape  its  clutches,  has  accordingly 
felt  itself  called  upon  to  come,  as  far  as 
possible,  to  the  rescue  of  these  social 
pariahs  from  the  verbal  pitfalls  which 
beset  them  on  every  side.  It  is  not 
enough  that  our  great  dictionaries  should 
set  forth  the  pronunciation  of  the  words 
they  record.  A  multitude  of  manuals 
are  constantly  brought  out  which  under- 
take to  show  us  not  only  how  we  ought 
7 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

to  pronounce,  but  also  how  we  ought  not 
to  pronounce.  In  fact,  societies  have 
occasionally  been  formed  for  the  purpose 
of  carrying  out  this  same  laudable  ob- 
ject. But  the  question  at  once  arises, 
Who  is  it  that  has  taught  the  teachers? 
How  are  we  to  know  that  the  guides  who 
assume  to  lead  us  are  guides  whom  we 
can  trust  ?  That  is  to  say,  where  is  to  be 
found  the  standard  of  pronunciation  to 
which  we  are  all  bound  to  conform? 
Who  established  it?  Who  maintain  it? 
Who  are  the  persons  invested  with  the 
authority  to  decide  for  us  in  any  given 
case  how  it  is  our  duty  to  pronounce, 
and  how  did  they  come  to  be  so  invested  ? 
These  are  questions  that  at  once  present 
themselves  to  him  who  gives  serious 
thought  to  the  subject.  Nor  are  they 
so  easily  answered  as  our  self-constituted 
instructors  seem  to  think.  Limited 
8 


PRONUNCIATION 

knowledge  enables  us  to  speak  with 
positiveness ;  fuller  knowledge  invariably 
makes  us  hesitate. 

Every  one  who  is  familiar  with  the 
periodical  literature  of  both  Great  Brit- 
ain and  America  has  constantly  forced 
upon  his  attention  the  existence  of  a 
class  of  persons  who  rejoice  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  knowing  that  the  pronunci- 
ation they  have  is  the  best  which  exists. 
For  the  orthoepic  Pharisee  is  never  con- 
tent with  thanking  the  Lord  that  he  is 
not  as  other  men.  He  wants  some  one 
else  besides  his  Creator  to  be  aware  of 
the  fact;  and  he  cannot  rest  easy  until 
he  has  communicated  the  information  to 
the  outside  world  through  the  agency  of 
the  press.  The  reason  he  gives  for  his 
self-satisfaction  is  usually  one  of  the  fol- 
lowing two.  The  first  is  that  he  belongs 
both  by  birth  and  training  to  a  particu- 
9 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

lar  city  or  to  a  particular  district  of  coun- 
try. It  is  there,  we  are  told,  that  the 
language  is  pronounced  with  the  greatest 
purity.  The  inevitable  inferiority  in 
this  respect  of  those  who  have  been  bom 
and  brought  up  elsewhere  is  impressed 
upon  them  gently  or  harshly  according 
to  the  disposition  of  the  speaker;  but 
care  is  always  taken  that  it  shall  be 
impressed  firmly.  It  is  sometimes  deli- 
cately hinted,  more  often  it  is  stoutly 
asserted,  that  for  him  who  is  brought  up 
outside  of  a  certain  region  there  is  little 
or  no  hope  of  attaining  that  exquisite 
intonation  or  modulation  of  voice  which 
is  the  peculiar  birthright  of  its  inhabi- 
tants. The  more  kindly  disposed  of  the 
children  of  this  favored  soil  condescend 
to  express  regret  for  the  unhappy  lot  of 
those  who  have  been  reared  outside  of 
the  sacred  pale.     It  is  not  their  fault, 

lO 


PRONUNCIATION 

to  be  sure — for  clearly  everybody  cannot 
be  born  in  the  same  place — but  by  an 
inscrutable  dispensation  of  providence, 
it  has  been  made  their  misfortune. 

But  much  more  emphatic  and  thor- 
ough-going is  the  second  reason  given. 
In  it  the  social  distinction  is  set  up. 
Alongside  of  it  the  barriers  of  birth- 
place are  hardly  worthy  of  being  taken 
into  consideration.  There  is  a  mys- 
tic inner  circle,  it  is  intimated,  into 
which  only  the  orthoepically  pure  can 
ever  penetrate.  A  particular  pronunci- 
ation of  a  particular  word  reveals  at 
once  to  its  members  that  the  unfortu- 
nate perpetrator  does  not  belong  to  the 
company  of  the  elect.  "Thy  speech 
bewrayeth  thee,"  said  the  servants  to 
Peter.  The  GaHlean,  in  spite  of  his  de- 
nials, stood  disclosed  to  the  humblest 
inhabitant  of  the  holy  city.  The  same 
II 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

state  of  things  continues  yet.  There 
are  occasionally  to  be  found,  even  among 
the  fairly  well  educated,  those  who  as- 
sure us  that  the  way  certain  other  edu- 
cated persons  pronounce  certain  words 
reveals  unmistakably  the  hall-mark  of 
social  inferiority  if  not  that  of  vul- 
garity. These  latter  may  be  conceded 
to  be  respectable,  but  they  cannot  be 
reckoned  really  high-bred.  The  con- 
viction of  orthoepic  righteousness  which 
springs  from  the  consciousness  of  social 
position  far  surpasses  in  strength  that 
which  arises  from  birth  in  a  particular 
place.  But  when  the  two  chance  to 
meet  in  the  same  person,  the  authority 
arising  from  the  combination  is  felt,  at 
least  by  the  man  himself,  to  be  abso- 
lutely unassailable.  It  is  sufficient  to 
establish  in  his  own  eyes  the  infallibility 
of  his  oracular  utterances,  and  to  justify 

12 


PRONUNCIATION 

his  contempt  for  the  presumption  which 
ventures  to  dispute  them. 

The  most  saddening  thing  for  those 
shut  out  of  the  sacred  precincts  just  in- 
dicated is  the  hopelessness  of  their  sit- 
uation. For  them  there  is  no  rehef  in 
sight.  As  a  remedy  against  the  conse- 
quences of  this  exclusion  we  leam  that 
not  even  the  highest  education  is  of  any 
avail.  From  that  quarter  can  come  no 
help;  in  truth,  rather  harm.  For  at 
times  we  have  of  late  been  given  to  un- 
derstand that  the  spread  of  education 
is  distinctly  detrimental  to  culture.  As 
regards  propriety  of  pronunciation,  the 
latter  too  often  suffers  from  the  increas- 
ing prevalence  of  the  former.  The  lam- 
entable effects  wrought  by  it  have,  to 
some  extent,  been  made  a  subject  of 
complaint  in  the  periodical  press.  A 
short  quotation  will  furnish  an  illustra- 
13 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

tion  of  a  view  which  is  sincerely  held  by 
some,  is  heard  frequently  in  conversa- 
tion, and  is  occasionally  met  with  in 
print.  This  particular  passage  is  found 
in  a  letter  which  appeared  in  the  col- 
umns of  a  London  weekly  of  a  date  no 
further  back  than  1900:  "At  one  time 
(some  twenty  years  ago),"  wrote  the 
correspondent,  "the  pronunciation  of 
interesting  was  a  fair  criterion  of  social 
position,  but  owing  to  the  spread  of  edu- 
cation, education  and  culture  are  no 
longer  synonymous,  and  teaching  is  now 
principally  in  the  hands  of  those  who 
may  be  said  to  be  highly  educated  with- 
out having  been  surrounded  by  persons 
of  culture  in  their  youth.  Hence  all 
sorts  of  strange  departures  in  the  way 
of  pronunciation." 

To  culture  of  the  sort  here  indicated 
education  will  be  more  than  deleterious. 
14 


PRONUNCIATION 

It  will  be  destructive;  for  in  the  long 
run  it  will  even  reach  the  class  who  con- 
found their  own  ignorance  with  culture. 
Yet  the  illusions  about  this  matter  are 
so  agreeable,  they  bring  with  them  a  sat- 
isfaction so  profound,  that  by  many  it 
may  be  deemed  an  act  of  almost  wanton 
maliciousness  to  say  anything  which 
tends  to  ruffle  the  complacency  of  per- 
sons, frequently  very  worthy  if  not  par- 
ticularly well  informed,  who  give  utter- 
ance to  views  such  as  have  just  been 
expressed.  But  no  anxiety  need  be 
felt  on  their  account.  No  criticism  will 
ever  disturb  the  serenity  of  their  con- 
victions about  themselves  or  their  utter- 
ance. It  will  never  occur  to  them  that 
the  pronunciation  they  so  fondly  cherish 
is  right  in  their  eyes  for  no  other  reason 
at  all  than  that  it  is  the  one  which  they 
have  been  accustomed  to  hear  in  the 
IS 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

little  set  to  whicli  they  belong.  The 
humble  outsider,  seeking  for  an  unas- 
sailable standard,  might  accept  meekly 
their  pronouncements  did  he  not  en- 
counter differing  ones  coming  from  per- 
sons boasting  the  same  birthplace  as 
the  preceding  and  belonging  to  the  same 
social  grade.  The  two  parties,  he  finds, 
are  constantly  coming  into  collision. 
Unseemly  disputes  prevail.  Both  sides 
are  equally  opinionated,  equally  pugna- 
cious, and,  as  he  at  last  is  forced  to  con- 
clude, equally  ignorant.  How,  then,  in 
this  perpetual  conflict  of  opinion,  can 
one  expect  to  discover  the  exact  >truth  ? 
How  in  any  given  case  can  we  hope  to 
know  whether  the  pronunciation  indi- 
cated is  right  or  wrong?  Some  help 
towards  clearing  up  the  obscurity  which 
surrounds  the  subject  may  be  gained  by 
ascertaining,  in  the  first  place,  the  precise 
i6 


PRONUNCIATION 

nature  of  the  difficulty  attending  it,  and, 
in  the  second  place,  the  efforts  to  remove 
it  which  have  been  resorted  to  in  the 
past. 

Two  general  statements  can  be  made 
at  the  outset.  One  is  that  there  is  a 
body  of  English  words  certain  pronun- 
ciations of  which  every  cultivated  man 
the  world  over  recognizes  at  once  as  be- 
longing to  the  speech  of  the  uneducated 
or  the  imperfectly  educated.  We  char- 
acterize them  as  illiterate.  The  use  of 
them  stamps  everywhere  the  present 
social  condition  of  the  speaker  or  pro- 
claims the  class  from  which  he  sprang. 
AlHed  to  this,  although  representative 
of  a  distinctly  different  grade  of  culti- 
vation, is  what  may  be  called  the  geo- 
graphical pronunciation.  There  are  or- 
thoepical  peculiarities  which  belong  to 
a  certain  region  or  to  certain  regions, 
a  17 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

They  are  unconsciously  adopted  by  him 
who  has  heard  them  from  infancy.  If 
an  educated  man,  he  may,  and  usually 
does,  discard  them  in  later  life.  Even 
if  he  chooses  to  cUng  to  them,  he  recog- 
nizes that  they  are  provincial,  that  they 
are  not  sanctioned  by  the  best  general 
usage.  Yet  it  is  not  always  an  easy 
matter  to  shake  them  off  even  if  he 
desires  so  to  do.  If  once  fastened  upon 
him  in  early  youth,  he  is  liable  at  times 
to  revert  to  them  in  moments  of  care- 
lessness or  excitement. 

This  is  the  first  point.  But  for  most 
of  us  there  is  no  more  difficulty  in  avoid- 
ing what  is  clearly  illiterate  or  provincial 
pronunciation  than  there  is  in  avoiding 
the  violation  of  the  ordinary  rules  of 
grammar.  The  second  point  is  of  more 
importance  in  this  discussion.  This  is 
that  another  and  very  much  larger  body 
i8 


PRONUNCIATION 

of  words  exists — embracing,  in  fact,  the 
immense  majority  of  the  words  of  the 
language  used  in  conversation  or  pubHc 
address — about  which  there  is  a  substan- 
tial agreement  among  the  cultivated, 
wherever  English  is  spoken  at  all.  A 
substantial  agreement,  it  must  be  kept 
in  mind,  not  an  exact  agreement.  No 
one's  pronunciation  ever  resembles  an- 
other's precisely,  any  more  than  one 
man's  watch  keeps  precisely  the  same 
time  as  another  man's.  Furthermore, 
no  one's  pronunciation  is  exactly  the 
same  under  all  circumstances.  There 
are,  besides,  numerous  variations  of 
speech  which  the  trained  ear  of  the 
phonetic  scholar  instantly  recognizes, 
but  which  entirely  escape  the  observa- 
tion of  most  of  us.  Much  more  percep- 
tible is  the  variation  between  the  speech 
of  the  cultivated  classes  of  different  com- 
19 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

munities,  of  different  regions,  of  different 
lands.  It  is  sometimes  so  marked  that 
the  moment  we  hear  a  man's  voice  we 
recognize  without  difficulty  the  country 
or  part  of  the  country  which  has  given 
him  birth. 

In  a  discussion  of  this  sort  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  observe  that  it  is  the  usage 
of  the  educated  body  alone  which  is  as- 
sumed to  be  under  consideration.  The 
pronunciation  of  the  illiterate  no  one 
thinks  of  referring  to,  save  occasionally 
for  the  amiable  purpose  of  imputing  it 
to  those  with  whom  he  chances  to  differ. 
As  has  just  been  pointed  out,  the  usage 
of  the  men  of  this  educated  body,  so 
far  as  regards  the  immense  majority  of 
words,  is  essentially  the  same  where  Eng- 
lish is  spoken.  It  is  marked,  indeed,  by 
variations  of  intonation,  of  modulation, 
and,  to  some  extent,  of  accentuation. 
20 


PRONUNCIATION 

But,  after  all,  these  variations  are  not 
only  few  in  number,  comparatively- 
speaking;  they  are  really  of  slight  im- 
portance. They  do  not  interfere  with 
mutual  understanding,  nor  do  they 
create  embarrassment.  In  the  ordinary 
intercourse  of  life  they  can  be  and  they 
are  ignored.  To  go  back  to  the  com- 
parison just  used,  our  watches  all  pur- 
port to  keep  the  same  time.  In  one 
sense  they  do,  in  another  they  do  not. 
But  their  failure  in  agreement  is  of  so 
little  moment  that  we  feel  no  hesita- 
tion in  placing  upon  them  the  fullest 
reliance  in  all  arrangements  we  set  out 
to  make  with  one  another. 

Accordingly,  in  the  case  just  specified 
— that  of  illiterate  pronunciation  and 
that  of  cultivated  pronunciation  of  most 
of  our  speech — we  find  no  trouble  in 
choosing  the  right  course.     It  is  between 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

these  two  extremes  that  the  real  diffi- 
culty manifests  itself.  There  exists  a 
goodly  number  of  words  in  regard  to 
which  the  usage  of  the  educated  varies, 
and  often  varies  decidedly.  This  fact 
has  been  brought  prominently  to  the 
attention  of  most  of  us  in  recent  years 
by  the  multiplication  of  pronouncing 
dictionaries.  As  a  single  illustration 
out  of  many  that  could  be  cited,  let  us 
select  the  adjectives  ending  in  -He.  By 
some  lexicographers  this  termination  is 
sounded  il,  by  others  il.  As  an  example 
of  the  class,  take  the  word  hostile.  Gen- 
erally in  the  earlier  English  dictiona- 
ries which  set  out  to  give  correct  usage 
—  for  instance,  those  of  Sheridan  and 
Walker  and  of  Smart's  revision  of 
Walker  —  it  was  pronounced  hos'ttl. 
Such  it  continues  to  be  at  the  present 
day  in  American  dictionaries.     But  in 

22 


PRONUNCIATION 

most  of  the  late  English  ones — such  as 
Stormonth's  and  the  two  which  go  re- 
spectively under  the  names  of  the  Im- 
perial and  the  Encyclopaedic  —  it  is 
pronounced  hos-tile' .  The  new  Oxford 
dictionary  gives  both  pronunciations, 
but  puts  hos-tile'  first. 

Take  again  the  class  of  words  begin- 
ning with  wh,  such  as  while,  when,  and 
Whig.  If  we  can  trust  certain  authori- 
ties, the  pronunciation  of  the  aspirate 
in  polite  society  in  England  is  the  ex- 
ception and  not  the  rule.  In  America 
the  condition  of  things  is  certainly  the 
reverse.  Or,  to  come  down  from  classes 
to  single  words,  the  prevailing  English 
pronunciation  of  schedule  is  represented 
as  being  shed' -ill;  that  of  America  is  ordi- 
narily sked'-yHl.  These  are  divergences 
that  attain  almost  the  dignity  of  nation- 
al distinctions.  Yet,  as  a  whole,  they 
23 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

are  not  numerous,  nor  do  they  compare 
in  importance  with  the  differences  in  the 
speech  of  individuals  belonging  to  the 
same  country  or  even  to  the  same  com- 
munity. It  is  about  their  varying  pro- 
nunciation of  words  that  controversy 
rages.  What  is  the  proper  usage  in  any 
particular  case?  Lucky  is  he  who  with 
us  is  the  first  to  secure  the  passages  of 
the  Jordan — that  is,  in  this  day,  the  au- 
thority of  all  the  dictionaries.  Here  it 
is  that  the  men  of  Gilead  now  slay  the 
children  of  Ephraim. 

The  time  has  been  purposely  limited 
to  the  present.  It  is  very  evident  that 
there  was  once  a  period  when  great  lib- 
erty was  allowed  in  the  matter  of  pro- 
nunciation. The  earhest  dictionaries 
made  no  effort  to  indicate  it.  Some 
works,  indeed,  appeared  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  and  the  first  part  of  the 
24 


PRONUNCIATION 

eighteenth  which  paid  a  slight  attention 
to  the  subject.  Most  of  these,  however, 
dealt  with  the  rectification  of  the  orthog- 
raphy. Any  remarks  about  orthoepy 
contained  in  them  were  incidental. 
Certain  principles  were  laid  down,  and 
to  illustrate  these,  the  pronunciation  of 
a  number  of  words  would  be  given. 
Anomalies,  too,  were  sometimes  pointed 
out.  But  there  was  no  work  in  which 
orthoepy  was  made  a  regular  feature, 
still  less  a  prominent  one.  Nor  did 
the  dictionaries  which  followed  after 
the  treatises  just  mentioned  make  for  a 
long  time  much  of  an  advance  in  this 
direction.  The  furthest  they  went  was 
to  point  out  upon  what  syllable  of  the 
word  the  accent  should  rest.  Even  so 
much  disposition  as  this  to  slake  the 
thirst  for  useful  information  was  mani- 
fested almost  reluctantly.     Before  Dr. 

25 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Johnson's  dictionary  appeared,  in  1755, 
Bailey's  was  held  in  the  highest  estima- 
tion and  had  the  largest  circulation.  It 
was  originally  pubHshed  in  1721;  but 
it  was  not  until  the  fifth  edition  of 
1733  that  any  attempt  was  made  in  it 
to  mark  the  syllable  upon  which  the 
stress  should  fall.  This  for  many  years 
after  was  the  ultima  Thule  of  advent- 
ure in  the  direction  of  indicating  pro- 
nunciation. 

The  pronouncing  dictionary  is,  in 
truth,  a  comparatively  modem  invention. 
A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  it  did  not 
exist;  even  a  hundred  years  ago  it  had 
not  attained  to  anything  like  the  re- 
spect with  which  it  is  now  regarded.  No 
extraordinary  desire,  indeed,  could  have 
been  felt  at  first  for  such  a  work.  Had 
there  been,  we  may  be  sure  it  would  have 
been  gratified.  Every  man  of  cultiva- 
26 


PRONUNCIATION 

tion  was  once,  within  reasonable  limits, 
a  law  unto  himself.  All  such  persons 
assumed,  as  some  do  still,  that  the  pro- 
nunciation they  employed  was  the  very 
best  possible,  simply  because  it  was  their 
own  pronunciation.  This  priceless  treas- 
ure was  theirs  by  the  right  of  inheritance. 
Naturally,  one  of  the  class  would  resent 
any  attempt  on  the  part  of  his  neighbor 
to  impose  upon  him  a  different  usage. 
Much  more  would  he  be  inclined  to  resent 
the  impertinence  which  presumed  to 
stigmatize  his  usage  as  exhibiting  pecu- 
liarities and  improprieties.  He  felt  not 
the  least  necessity  of  deferring  to  the 
opinions  of  some  one  else,  whose  princi- 
pal claim  to  authority  was  that  he  had 
taken  the  trouble  to  get  his  practice  into 
print. 

In  the  course  of  time,  however,  there 
has  ensued  a  complete  change  of  front. 
27 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

The  pronouncing  dictionary  has  not  only 
come,  but  it  is  treated  with  a  deference 
to  which,  at  the  outset,  it  was  an  utter 
stranger.  It  seems  as  if  its  production 
must  have  been  due  in  the  first  instance 
to  the  desire  for  a  work  of  such  a  nature, 
manifested  by  the  imperfectly  educated 
middle  class,  rising  more  and  more  into 
social  prominence.  The  members  of  this 
body  wanted  somebody  to  tell  them  pre- 
cisely what  to  say  and  how  to  say  it. 
They  did  not  care  to  exercise  the  right 
of  private  judgment,  or,  rather,  they  did 
not  have  sufficient  faith  in  their  own 
cultivation  to  trust  it.  Authority  was 
what  they  were  after;  and  when  men 
are  longing  for  authority  on  any  subject, 
some  one  will  be  considerate  enough  of 
their  welfare,  and  confident  enough  in 
his  own  sufficiency,  to  come  forward  and 
furnish  it.  We  see  the  same  thing  con- 
28 


PRONUNCIATION 

stantly  exemplified  to-day  in  the  case  of 
disputed  points  of  linguistic  usage.  It 
is  not  necessary  for  the  self-appointed 
instructor  to  know.  All  that  is  required 
of  him  is  that  he  shall  be  positive :  then 
his  disciples  will  receive  with  meekness 
and  gratitude  the  information  or  misin- 
formation which  he  condescends  to  im- 
part. 

It  was  about  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  that  the  craving  for  a 
pure  and  perfect  orthoepic  guide  began 
to  manifest  itself  in  a  way  that  required 
relief.  Dr.  Johnson's  dictionary  had 
been  pubHshed  in  1755.  For  general 
purposes  it  became  at  once  and  long  re- 
mained the  standard.  It  was  only  in  a 
few  instances,  however,  that  it  made 
any  attempt  to  go  beyond  its  immediate 
predecessors  in  the  matter  of  indicating 
pronunciation.  Like  them,  it  generally 
29 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

contented  itself  with  marking  the  syl- 
lable upon  which  the  stress  of  voice 
should  fall.  This  was  felt  not  to  be 
enough.  Accordingly,  before  the  end  of 
the  century  a  number  of  works  came  out 
to  supply  a  want  which  was  becoming 
urgent.  Two  men  there  are — Thomas 
Sheridan  and  John  Walker — who  emerge 
conspicuously  from  the  ranks  of  those 
who  strove  to  establish  a  standard  pro- 
nunciation. The  first  was  well  known 
in  his  time  as  an  actor,  better  known 
later  as  a  lecturer  on  elocution,  best 
known  to  most  of  us  now  as  the  father 
of  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan.  The  sec- 
ond was  also  an  actor,  not  so  well  known 
in  this  capacity  as  the  preceding,  but 
with  full  as  great  a  reputation  as  a  lect- 
urer on  elocution.  But  besides  these 
two,  there  was  a  large  number  of  others 
who  made  it  their  aim  to  instruct  their 
30 


PRONUNCIATION 

fellow  -  men  in  this  matter.  In  truth, 
during  the  eighth  decade  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  a  sort  of  lexical  epidemic 
broke  out.  Between  the  beginning  of 
1773  and  the  end  of  1775,  particularly, 
appeared  the  dictionaries  of  Kenrick, 
Barclay,  Ash,  and  Perry,  and  all  had  a 
good  deal  to  say  on  the  subject  of  or- 
thoepy. 

It  was  Sheridan,  perhaps,  who  first 
conceived  the  idea  of  bringing  out  a  dic- 
tionary in  which  pronunciation  should 
be  a  leading,  if  not  the  leading,  feature. 
But  if  so,  he  was  not  the  first  to  carry 
the  project  into  execution.  This  was  the 
work  of  a  certain  James  Buchanan.  His 
name  indicates  his  nationality.  Early 
in  1757  he  appeared  as  the  author  of  a 
small  English  dictionary  in  which,  be- 
sides other  things,  he  marked  the  long 
and  short  sounds  of  the  vowels,  distin- 
31 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

guished  the  silent  letters,  and  pointed 
out  the  number  of  syllables  of  which 
each  word  consisted.  "Thus  was  I  the 
first,"  he  said  in  a  later  work,  "who  en- 
deavored to  make  the  proper  pronuncia- 
tion of  our  language  of  easy  acquisition 
to  foreigners,  and  to  introduce  an  uni- 
form one  for  the  sake  of  the  natives; 
amongst  whom  it  is  still  so  notoriously 
vague  and  unstable."  An  attempt  of 
an  essentially  similar  kind  was  made 
somewhat  later  by  another  Scotch- 
man named  WilUam  Johnston.  His 
work  appeared  in  1764.  Furthermore, 
in  that  year  there  came  out  anony- 
mously a  little  volume  of  the  same 
nature,  designed  for  the  use  of  schools. 
It  was  described  by  a  reviewer  of  the 
time  as  a  "well-meant  attempt  for 
ascertaining  the  pronunciation  and 
purity  of  the  language."  These  things 
32 


PRONUNCIATION 

are  conclusive  proof  that  the  desire 
and  demand  for  an  orthoepic  guide 
was  in  the  air.  Less  than  two  years 
after  the  appearance  of  the  dictionaries 
just  mentioned,  Buchanan  followed  up 
his  previous  essay  by  bringing  out  a 
much  more  ambitious  work  devoted  to 
pronunciation  and  to  nothing  else.  It 
was  dedicated  with  the  most  profound 
reverence  to  the  two  august  Houses  of 
the  British  Parliament.  Its  title-page 
explained  its  object.  It  was  there  called 
"an  essay  towards  establishing  a  stand- 
ard for  an  elegant  and  uniform  pronun- 
ciation of  the  English  language  through- 
out the  British  dominions,  as  practised 
by  the  most  learned  and  polite  speak- 
ers." It  was,  as  its  title-page  further 
declared,  "a  work  entirely  new."  Noth- 
ing like  it  had  appeared  before ;  perhaps 
nothing  like  it  has  appeared  since.  It 
3  33 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

was  a  pronouncing  dictionary  pure  and 
simple.  It  contained  no  definitions.  It 
was  a  list  of  over  twenty-seven  thousand 
words  arranged  in  double  columns,  in 
one  column  spelled  as  written,  in  the 
other  spelled  as  pronounced. 

But  in  those  early  days  there  was  no 
disposition  to  pay  respect  to  the  man 
who  set  himself  up  as  an  authority.  The 
author  of  this  essay  towards  establishing 
an  elegant  and  uniform  pronunciation 
was  speedily  made  to  know  the  opinion 
entertained  of  his  qualifications  for  act- 
ing as  a  guide  to  his  fellow-men.  "Mr. 
Buchanan,"  said  the  most  influential  re- 
view of  the  time,  "does  not  appear  to 
understand  how  English  is  pronounced 
by  polite  and  just  speakers."*     This  is 

^Monthly  Review,  vol.  xxxiii.,  p.  493,  De- 
cember, 1765.  Buchanan's  work,  however, 
bore  the  date  of  1766  on  its  title-page. 

34 


PRONUNCIATION 

the  sort  of  criticism  we  are  at  heart  in- 
clined to  bestow  upon  all  those  whose 
usage  differs  from  our  own.  We  are  now 
somewhat  timid  about  its  utterance ;  but 
in  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  ex- 
pressed openly  and  fearlessly.  It  was  a 
further  objection  made  to  the  work  by 
this  same  critical  periodical  that  seeing 
the  word  spelled  as  it  was  pronounced 
would  insensibly  lead  the  reader  to 
spell  wrongly.  Later  this  was  much 
insisted  upon  by  Kenrick  in  his  censure 
of  Buchanan.  The  worship  of  the  or- 
thographical fetich  was  already  under 
full  headway. 

Still,  the  most  striking  result  of  the 
successive  appearance  of  these  diction- 
aries was  the  revelation  it  brought  of 
the  important  differences  both  of  opinion 
and  of  practice  that  prevailed.  As  they 
came  out,  one  after  another,  a  series  of 
35 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

controversies  went  on  in  regard  to  the 
pronunciations  authorized  by  their  com- 
pilers. These  were  made  the  subject  of 
comment,  in  the  shape  of  attack  or  of 
commendation,  in  the  critical  periodicals 
of  the  time.  Such  controversies  show 
that  men  quarrelled  then  about  the 
matter  just  as  they  do  now,  and  not  un- 
frequently  over  the  very  same  words. 
Each  disputant  was  as  positive  then  as 
he  is  now  that  he  was  in  possession  of 
the  best  possible  pronunciation,  and  was 
just  as  ready  to  charge  vulgarity  or 
slovenly  practice  upon  those  whose  usage 
was  different  from  his  own.  In  humble 
shall  the  aspirate  be  sounded  or  not? 
Shall  the  ca  of  hearth  have  the  sound  it 
has  in  heart  or  that  in  earth?  Shall 
leisure  be  pronounced  so  as  to  ryme 
with  pleasure  or  with  seizure?  These 
are  illustrations  of  scores  of  questions 
36 


PRONUNCIATION 

which  were  discussed,  and  about  which 
contradictory  views  were  very  positive- 
ly expressed. 

Several  words  there  were,  indeed,  in 
regard  to  which  much  feeling  was 
aroused.  One  of  these  was  the  past  par- 
ticiple of  the  substantive  verb.  Shall 
been  be  pronounced  so  as  to  rhyme  with 
seen  or  sin  f  On  this  subject  of  never- 
ending  controversy  orthoepists  ranged 
themselves  in  hostile  camps,  and  the 
members  of  each  party  felt  themselves 
at  liberty  to  affect  a  lofty  superiority  to 
those  belonging  to  the  other.  About 
the  middle  of  the  following  century, 
Hawthorne,  in  relating  his  consular  ex- 
periences, tells  us  that  this  word  was 
the  best  shibboleth  he  could  hit  upon  to 
detect  the  English  rogue  appealing  to 
him  for  aid  from  the  genuine  Yankee 
article.  He  considered  it  a  national  dis- 
37 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

tinction.  The  English,  he  said,  invari- 
ably made  it  to  ryme  with  green,  while 
the  Americans,  at  least  the  Nori;hem- 
ers,  universally  pronounced  it  bin  This 
may  or  may  not  be  the  case.  The  or- 
thoepy of  even  a  single  community  is  a 
somewhat  ticklish  thing  to  handle;  but 
when  it  comes  to  that  of  a  whole  coun- 
try, the  difficulty  increases  in  at  least  an 
arithmetical  ratio.  Certain  it  is  that 
several  of  the  most  approved  English 
authorities,  both  before  and  at  the  time 
Hawthorne  was  writing,  favored  what 
he  styled  the  American  pronunciation. 
It  was  that  which  had  been  given  by 
Sheridan.  His  contemporary.  Walker, 
indeed,  assured  us  that  been  "is  scarcely 
ever  heard  otherwise  than  as  the  noun 
bin,  a  repository  for  com  or  wine."  It 
was  the  only  one  of  the  two  pronuncia- 
tions authorized  by  Smart,  Walker's  re- 
38 


PRONUNCIATION 

viser.  The  new  English  dictionary  of 
the  Philological  Society  sanctions  both. 
One  of  the  words  about  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  which  orthoepists  disputed  then 
remains  full  as  much  a  subject  of  dis- 
pute now.  The  attitude  exhibited  tow- 
ards it  at  present  is  a  striking  illustra- 
tion of  how  states  of  mind  repeat  them- 
selves. The  word  in  question  is  vase. 
This  enjoys  a  distinction,  granted  to 
few  other  terms,  of  having  four  different 
pronunciations,  if,  indeed,  we  cannot  say 
five.  Of  these,  three  at  least  were  in 
existence  from  the  beginning.  Two  of 
the  pronunciations  affected  the  sound 
of  s,  two  that  of  a.  In  the  case  of  the 
consonant  variation,  the  word,  accord- 
ing to  one  method,  rymed  with  case,  ac- 
cording to  the  other  with  daze.  Dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century  the  former 
was  the  pronunciation  generally,  though 
39 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

far  from  exclusively,  favored  by  orthoe- 
pists.  But  this  attitude  was  largely  re- 
versed when  the  latter  method  was 
adopted  and  urgently  insisted  upon  by 
Walker.  He  himself  had  heard,  he  said, 
the  5  universally  sounded  as  z.  His  ad- 
vocacy of  that  pronunciation,  owing  to 
his  wide  acceptance  as  an  authority, 
very  materially  extended  its  use.  But 
the  other  held  its  ground.  Consequent- 
ly, through  the  early  and  the  middle  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  English  or- 
thoepists  were  largely  divided  into  two 
factions  on  this  point,  each  of  which  was 
hardly  disposed  to  concede  the  existence 
of  the  practice  sanctioned  by  the  other. 
But  there  was  also  a  difference  about 
the  pronunciation  of  the  vowel.  This 
variation  must  have  been  in  existence 
from  the  beginning;  but  it  was  not  until 
a  period  near  our  own  time  that  it  came 
40 


PRONUNCIATION 

into  much  prominence.  There  was  one 
sound  of  it  which  eighteenth-century 
orthoepists  had  heard,  or  at  least  had 
heard  of;  for  it  was  occasionally  made 
the  subject  of  comment.  It  was  the 
one  in  which  a  would  be  represented  by 
aw.  The  only  authority  who  sanctioned 
it  was  Elphinston;  but  its  actual  exist- 
ence was  conceded  by  others.  Nares, 
indeed,  declared  that  it  was  often  used; 
"but,"  he  added,  "I  think,  affectedly." 
To  the  same  purport  spoke  Walker.  By 
a  few,  he  said,  the  a  was  pronounced  like 
aw;  but  "this,"  he  continued,  "being 
too  refined  for  the  general  ear,  is  now 
but  seldom  heard."  Such  was  the  mild 
way  in  which  he  spoke  of  it  in  one  place ; 
in  another  he  followed  Nares  in  terming 
it  affected.  It  is  very  clear  that  this 
pronunciation  of  the  vowel  was  not 
looked  upon  with  favor  by  eighteenth- 
41 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

century  orthoepists.  Yet  it  must  have 
been  long  in  use,  however  little  recog- 
nized. One  of  the  earlier  ways  of  spell- 
ing the  word  was  vause;  and  this  could 
only  have  been  resorted  to  in  order  to 
make  it  accord  with  the  pronunciation 
it  received.  Though  frowned  upon,  it 
continued  to  flourish  and  won  its  way 
to  more  and  more  acceptance.  But 
there  was  yet  another  pronunciation  in 
which  the  vowel  had  the  force  of  a  in 
father.  This  seems  to  have  added  a 
further  complication  to  usage,  caused 
by  some  giving  to  5  the  sound  of  z,  and 
by  others  giving  it  that  heard  in  case. 
It  is  not  easy  to  say  when  this  second 
pronunciation  of  the  vowel  first  ap- 
peared ;  but  it  did  not  make  itself  much 
felt  until  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Before  it  the  aw  sound  ap- 
pears to  be  retiring;  at  least  that  is  an 
42 


PRONUNCIATION 

impression  entertained  by  many.  Still 
the  four  pronunciations  continue  to 
flourish  to-day,  one  of  them  prevailing 
in  one  quarter,  and  another  in  another. 
In  certain  places  they  may  be  said  to 
be,  after  a  manner,  fighting  one  another. 
This  general  condition  of  things  is  more 
than  likely  to  be  perpetuated  indefi- 
nitely. 

The  disposition  of  the  accent  gave  rise 
to  perhaps  the  most  heated  discussion. 
About  it  positions,  which  now  seem  very 
singular  to  us,  were  often  taken  then. 
Kenrick  was  severely  arraigned  by  one 
of  his  reviewers  for  laying  the  stress  upon 
the  last  syllable  of  July.  European  was 
a  word  about  which  controversy  raged 
with  much  violence.  Should  the  prin- 
cipal accent  rest  upon  the  penult  or  the 
antepenult?  There  was  a  good  deal  to 
be  said  upon  both  sides,  and  it  was  fre- 
43 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

quently  said  with  asperity.  In  1782  the 
European  Magazine  was  started.  Early 
in  its  history  an  irate  correspondent 
wrote  a  letter  to  it,  expressing  his  disgust 
with  the  way  the  city  beaux,  as  he  term- 
ed them,  pronounced  its  name.  He  rep- 
resented them  as  saying,  "Waiter,  bring 
me  the  Europe' an  Magazine."  All  in- 
telligent people  knew,  he  added,  that  the 
word  was  derived  from  Europe;  it  should, 
therefore,  be  Europ'ean.  The  other  way 
he  had  never  heard  save  from  "the  stu- 
dents in  monthly  publications."  These 
he  clearly  regarded  as  constituting  a 
contemptible  class  of  men.*  But  almost 
as  bitter  as  the  controversy  in  regard  to 
the  syllable  upon  which  the  accent 
should  rest  was  the  disagreement,  in  the 
case  of  certain  words,  as  to  the  pronun- 

^  European  Magazine,  vol.  ii.,  p.  263,  Oc- 
tober, 1782. 

44 


PRONUNCIATION 

ciation  of  the  syllable  itself.  Of  two 
given  ones,  which  reflected  best  the 
usage  of  the  best  society?  On  points 
like  these  professed  orthoepists  fre- 
quently took  opposite  sides;  and  the 
contempt  each  had  for  the  opinion  of 
the  other  could  hardly  be  spoken  of  as 
concealed.  One  of  the  matters  in  dis- 
pute was  the  propriety  of  interposing  a 
sound  resembling  e  when  ^  or  a  hard  g 
or  c  preceded  the  vowel  a  or  i.  The 
philologist  Robert  Nares  observed  in  a 
work  he  produced  on  the  *  Elements  of 
Orthoepy'  that ' '  ky-ind  for  kind  is  a  mon- 
ster of  pronunciation  heard  only  on  our 
stage."  *  This  remark  much  grieved 
Walker.  He  took  to  it  the  most  de- 
cided exception.  Nares  he  conceded  to 
be  a  very  solid  and  ingenious  writer  on 

* '  Elements  of  Orthoepy,'  p.  28. 
45 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  subject  of  orthoepy ;  but  in  this  par- 
ticular he  was  utterly  mistaken.  The 
practice  condemned  by  him  was  the 
practice  of  polite  speakers.  It  was  no 
fanciful  peculiarity  this,  but  a  usage 
arising  from  euphony  and  the  analogy 
of  the  language.  The  coalescence  of  the 
sound  like  the  consonant  y  with  the  let- 
ters between  which  it  is  interposed  gave 
a  certain  mellowness  to  the  pronuncia- 
tion. So  Walker  assured  us.  In  ac- 
cordance with  this  view  he  represented 
a  garden  and  a  guard  by  the  formations 
eggyardin  and  eggyard. 

Modem  orthoepists  accept  usage  as 
they  find  it,  or  suppose  they  find  it, 
with  little  disposition  to  dispute  it;  the 
earlier  ones  had  no  inclination  to  assume 
a  passive  attitude  when  such  usage  dis- 
agreed with  their  conceptions  of  pro- 
priety. They  looked  in  particular  with 
46 


PRONUNCIATION 

a  good  deal  of  indignation  upon  certain 
pronunciations  which  were  at  marked 
variance  from  the  orthography.  They 
could  not  comprehend  how  these  ever 
came  to  exist  in  the  first  place,  nor  could 
they  find  any  justification  for  their  con- 
tinuing to  be  retained.  As  a  general 
rule  these  peculiarities  were  survivals. 
They  represented  a  spelling  which  had 
once  existed  but  had  now  passed  away. 
One  of  the  terms  specially  objectionable 
was  China,  which,  as  a  designation  of  the 
ware  so  called,  even  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  continued  to  be 
almost  universally  pronounced  Chayny. 
This  usage,  under  the  operation  of  an  in- 
fluence yet  to  be  considered,  has  long 
ceased  to  be  fashionable.  Yet,  without 
doubt,  traces  of  it  are  still  to  be  found 
in  certain  quarters.  As  late  as  1855, 
Thackeray,  in  his  novel  of  '  The  New- 
47 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

comes,'  when  speaking  in  his  own  person, 
mentions  a  "blue  dragon  Chayny  jar"; 
but  in  so  doing  this  acute  observer  of 
men  and  manners  was  unquestionably 
representing  the  practice  of  the  persons 
about  whom  he  was  discoursing.  Colonel 
was  another  rock  of  offence.  It  was 
perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  most  heart- 
rending to  the  sticklers  for  what  they 
deemed  correct  usage.  The  pronuncia- 
tion col'nel,  though  sanctioned  by  Bailey 
and  Dr.  Johnson,  was  vulgar  enough; 
but  kur'nel,  the  only  one  now  authorized, 
was  atrociously  vulgar.  This  latter  pro- 
nunciation, coming  down  from  coronel, 
the  more  ancient  spelling  of  the  word, 
remained  for  a  long  while  a  source  of 
grief  to  many  who  recognized  the  im- 
possibility of  making  a  successful  stand 
against  this  most  abominable  of  perver- 
sions, as  it  was  termed.  They  saw  in 
48 


PRONUNCIATION 

its  general  adoption  the  triumph  of  usage 
over  propriety.  There  is  something  al- 
most pathetic  in  Walker's  lamentation 
that  "this  word  is  among  those  gross  ir- 
regularities which  must  be  given  up  as 
incorrigible." 

Still,  in  all  the  critical  comments  upon 
these  tentative  efforts  to  ascertain  and 
fix  pronunciation,  there  was  an  implied 
admission  that  the  end  aimed  at  was 
desirable.  This  remained  none  the  less 
true  even  when  lack  of  acquaintance 
with  the  best  usage  had  made  the 
method  taken  to  arrive  at  it,  in  the  par- 
ticular case  considered,  more  or  less  a 
failure.  The  demand,  in  truth,  for  the 
pronouncing  dictionary  was  too  con- 
tinuous and  pressing  to  permit  the  field 
to  be  unoccupied  for  any  length  of  time. 
There  were  several  who  entered  it  besides 
those  who  have  already  been  mentioned. 
4  49 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

The  matter  had  from  an  early  period 
attracted  the  attention  of  Sheridan. 
His  original  profession  as  an  actor,  his 
subsequent  occupation  as  a  teacher  of 
elocution  and  lecturer  upon  it,  had  im- 
pressed him  profoundly  with  the  de- 
sirability of  a  complete  work  of  this  nat- 
ure. The  question  of  orthoepy  was  one 
of  the  topics  upon  which  he  constantly 
dilated  in  his  treatises  dealing  with  the 
difficulties  of  the  English  tongue.  In 
1769  he  brought  out  a  work  entitled,  'A 
Plan  of  Education  for  the  Young  No- 
bility and  Gentry.'  In  this  the  consid- 
eration of  propriety  of  pronunciation 
occupied  a  conspicuous  place.  One  of 
the  objects  he  had  in  view  was  the  de- 
lightfully fascinating  dream  of  establish- 
ing exact  uniformity  of  English  speech 
over  all  the  globe,  not  only  in  the  rising 
generation,  but  for  all  future  ones. 
50 


PRONUNCIATION 

Sheridan  was  an  Irishman.  Except- 
ing him,  most  of  the  men  who  at  the  out- 
set interested  themselves  in  establishing 
a  standard  of  pronunciation  were  Scotch- 
men. This  was  a  fact  that  did  not  es- 
cape the  notice  of  their  compatriots  in 
England  engaged  in  similar  undertak- 
ings. One  of  these  new  dictionaries  was 
brought  out  by  William  Kenrick  in  1773. 
In  it  the  compiler  professed  to  give,  be- 
sides the  definitions,  not  merely  the  or- 
thography and  etymology  of  the  words, 
but  also  their  pronunciation,  "according 
to  the  present  practice  of  polished  speak- 
ers in  the  metropolis."  The  author  of 
this  particular  dictionary  was  a  sort  of 
Ishmaelite  man  of  letters,  who  dabbled 
in  everything  and  attacked  everybody 
who  was  meeting  with  any  more  success 
than  himself.  Still  his  remarks  are 
worth  noticing  because  they  embody 
SI 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

views  which  were  afterwards  to  find  fre- 
quent expression.  "There  seems,"  he 
wrote,  "a  most  ridiculous  absurdity  in 
the  pretensions  of  a  native  of  Aberdeen 
or  Tipperary  to  teach  the  natives  of 
London  to  speak  and  to  read.  Various 
have  been,  nevertheless,  the  modest  at- 
tempts of  the  Scots  and  Irish  to  establish 
a  standard  of  English  pronunciation. 
That  they  should  not  have  succeeded  is 
no  wonder.  Men  cannot  teach  others 
what  they  do  not  themselves  know."  It 
may  be  added  that  Kenrick  was  told  by 
one  of  his  reviewers  that  certain  of  the 
usages  he  authorized  were  "more  agree- 
able to  the  pronunciation  of  Welchmen 
than  that  of  polite  people  in  the  metrop- 
olis." ^ 

It  was  asserted  at  the  time  that  Ken- 

*  Critical  Review,   vol.  xxxvi.,  p.  344,  No- 
vember,  1773. 

52 


PRONUNCIATION 

rick  sought  to  forestall  the  work  of 
Sheridan,  which  was  then  well  known 
to  have  been  long  in  preparation.  If 
such  was  the  design,  it  failed  completely. 
The  first  regular  pronouncing  dictionary 
on  a  large  scale  was  the  production  of 
this  same  Irishman,  who,  because  he 
was  an  Irishman,  had  been  warned  from 
undertaking  the  project  at  all.  It  came 
out  in  two  large  volumes,  in  1780,  and 
went  through  several  editions  before  the 
end  of  the  century.  The  title-page  con- 
tained the  assertion  that  one  main  ob- 
ject in  the  compilation  of  the  work  was 
to  furnish  a  standard  of  pronunciation. 
Not  many  years  after  it  was  followed  by 
the  similar  dictionary  of  John  Walker. 
This  became  at  once  a  favorite.  It 
speedily  displaced  in  the  general  popular 
estimation  the  other  works  of  a  similar 
character,  though  it  never  deprived 
53 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

tliem  entirely  either  of  circulation  or  of 
influence.  For  most  Englishmen  it  may 
be  considered  as  having  been  for  a  long 
period  the  standard  of  authority.  It 
passed  through  numerous  editions  and 
underwent  several  revisions.  Of  these 
the  remodelling  which  it  received  at  the 
hands  of  Smart  in  1836  met  with  the 
greatest  success.  This  last  work,  and 
that  of  Worcester,  were,  according  to 
Ellis,  in  his  history  on  '  Early  English 
Pronunciation,'  the  ones  usually  followed 
in  England  down  to  a  comparatively 
recent  period,  so  far  as  dictionaries  were 
there  followed  at  all.  But  shortly  be- 
fore the  appearance  of  Smart's  revision 
of  Walker,  James  Knowles,  the  nephew 
of  Sheridan,  had  also  brought  out  a  pro- 
nouncing dictionary.  It  attained  a  fair 
measure  of  success.  In  the  United 
States  Webster  and  Worcester  divided 
54 


PRONUNCIATION 

honors  during  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  former  having  much 
the  more  extensive  circulation,  the  latter 
assuming  a  tone  of  loftier  linguistic  or 
rather  orthographical  virtue.  Here  have 
been  specified  the  works,  on  the  whole, 
most  widely  in  use;  but  besides  these 
there  were  numerous  others. 

There  was  one  question  in  particular 
which  the  early  makers  of  pronouncing 
dictionaries  felt  called  upon  to  answer, 
but  which  the  modern  ones  very  calmly 
and  without  question  very  judiciously  ig- 
nore. It  is  that  with  which  the  present 
discussion  opened.  Who  gave  them  their 
authority  to  establish  correct  usage,  or, 
at  least,  how  did  they  happen  to  come  by 
it?  In  every  instance  they  put  forward, 
directly  or  by  implication,  the  claim  that 
the  orthoepy  which  they  recommend  is 
the  very  best.  The  title-pages  of  the 
55 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

works  of  Buchanan  and  Kenrick,  as  we 
have  seen,  represent  the  pronunciation 
laid  down  by  them  as  being  that  of  the 
most  pohshed  society.  In  a  similar  way 
Perry,  in  his  Royal  Standard  Dictionary, 
which  came  out  in  1775,  informs  us  that 
it  exhibits  the  true  pronunciation,  "ac- 
cording to  the  present  practice  of  men 
of  letters,  eminent  orators,  and  polite 
speakers  in  London."  But  the  critics 
of  that  city  did  not  seem  always  to  rec- 
ognize in  it  their  own  usage.  Even 
those  generally  favorable  insisted  that 
in  several  instances  he  had  countenanced 
vulgarisms.  They  took  exception,  for 
example,  to  a  royal  standard  dictionary 
representing,  as  was  done  here,  the  pro- 
nunciation of  girl  as  garl  or  gal}    There 

'  This  statement  is  made  on  the  authority 
of  a  notice  of  the  first  edition  of  '  Perry's  Dic- 
tionary,' contained  in  the  Critical  Review,  vol. 

56 


PRONUNCIATION 

still  continued,  in  truth,  the  disposition 
on  the  part  of  every  man  to  consider  no 
one  but  himself  as  an  authority.  The 
feeling  generally  prevalent  was  repre- 
sented by  a  certain  William  Scott,  who, 
in  1786,  felt  called  upon  to  add  another 
pronouncing  dictionary  to  those  al- 
ready before  the  public.  To  him  the 
necessity  of  such  action  was  obvious. 
All  previous  works  of  this  nature,  he 
assured  us,  were  "extremely  deficient  in 
regard  to  the  pronunciation  of  words." 
This  want  he  felt  capable  of  supplying. 
As  was  then  usual,  he  declared  that  the 
pronunciation  would  be  given  "accord- 
ing to  the  present  practice  of  the  best 
speakers,"  and  as  was  then  usual,  also, 
those  who  deemed  themselves  the  best 

xl.,  p.  486.  In  the  only  edition  of  it  to  which 
I  have  access  —  a  much  later  one  —  no  such 
pronunciation  of  girl  is  given. 

57 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

speakers  found  fault  in  many  cases  with 
the  practice  he  recommended. 

At  the  same  time,  all  who  investigated 
the  subject,  without  any  prejudice  in 
favor  of  their  own  practice,  had  to  ad- 
mit that  there  was  frequently  a  good 
deal  of  difficulty  in  deciding  upon  the 
best  accepted  usage.  "The  literati," 
said  Perry,  "who  make  etymology  an  in- 
variable rule  of  pronunciation,  often 
pronounce  words  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
bring  upon  themselves  the  charge  of  af- 
fectation or  pedantry."  He  added  that, 
on  the  other  hand,  "mere  men  of  the 
world,  notwithstanding  all  their  polite- 
ness, often  retain  so  much  of  their  pro- 
vincial dialect,  and  commit  such  gross  er- 
rors in  speaking  and  writing,  as  to  exclude 
them  from  the  honor  of  being  the  stand- 
ard of  accurate  pronunciation.  Those  who 
unite  these  two  characters,  and  with  the 
58 


PRONUNCIATION 

correctness  and  precision  of  true  learn- 
ing combine  the  ease  and  elegance  of 
genteel  life,  may  justly  be  styled  the 
only  true  standard  of  propriety  of 
speech."  These  words  present  the  view 
theoretically  accepted.  The  leading  lex- 
icographers, who  prided  themselves  upon 
their  orthoepy,  did  not  question  its  jus- 
tice. They  felt  bound,  in  consequence, 
to  show  that  their  right  to  be  treated  as 
authorities  was  due  to  the  happy  com- 
bination which  had  met  in  them  of  the 
correctness  of  learning  and  the  elegance 
of  gentility.  Accordingly,  their  utter- 
ances on  this  point  deserve  much  more 
attention  than  they  have  ever  received. 
First  in  order  comes  Sheridan.  He 
was  bom  at  Quilca,  in  Ireland.  His  fa- 
ther, a  teacher  and  a  clergyman,  was  the 
intimate  friend  and  chosen  companion 
of  Swift.  It  was  to  some  extent  upon 
59 


THE   STANDARD    OF 

the  personal  relations  existing  between 
these  two  that  the  son  based  his  title  to 
speak  with  authority.  According  to 
him,  in  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  the 
Augustan  age  of  our  literature,  special 
attention  was  paid  to  the  English  lan- 
guage. It  was  then  pronounced  with 
the  greatest  uniformity  and  with  the  ut- 
most elegance.  When  the  House  of 
Hanover,  indifferent  to  learning  and  let- 
ters, came  to  the  throne,  this  happy  con- 
dition of  things  disappeared.  Men  be- 
came careless  both  in  writing  and  speak- 
ing. But  Sheridan  had  received  his 
early  education  from  a  master — by 
whom  he  meant  his  father — who  had 
been  trained  in  the  traditions  of  the  old 
school,  and  who,  through  Swift,  had 
ample  facilities  for  acquiring  the  best 
pronunciation  when  pronunciation  was 
at  its  best.  To  this  master  he  read 
60 


PRONUNCIATION 

daily  for  hours,  and  received  from  him 
constant  correction.  Subsequently  he 
had  come  in  contact  with  the  men  of  the 
age  most  distinguished  for  rank  and 
genius,  and  the  instruction  he  received 
in  early  youth  he  had  reinforced  by 
studying  the  utterance  of  the  many  wise 
and  great  whom  he  met. 

We  have  here  Sheridan's  credentials 
from  his  own  lips.  He  was  an  educated 
Irishman,  who  had  been  trained  by  an- 
other Irishman,  and  from  him  had  re- 
ceived the  pure  pronunciation  of  the  so- 
called  Augustan  age  of  our  literature. 
This,  he  averred,  was  better  than  that 
which  had  preceded  or  that  which  had 
followed  it.  His  original  authority  was, 
therefore,  that  of  his  father,  and,  by  im- 
plication, that  of  Dean  Swift.  It  was 
largely  upon  the  respect  due  to  the  lat- 
ter that  he  based  his  own  claims  to  con- 
6i 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

sideration.  In  so  doing,  Sheridan  was 
justified  to  this  extent,  that  there  were 
not  many  subjects  about  which  Swift 
was  more  particular  than  pronunciation. 
He  insisted  upon  it  in  season,  and  some- 
times, as  it  may  seem  to  us,  when  it  was 
distinctly  out  of  season.  Dr.  Delany 
relates,  for  instance,  that  when  any  one 
of  the  clergy  came  to  occupy  his  pulpit, 
the  Dean  would  pull  out  his  pencil  and  a 
piece  of  paper  the  moment  the  man  be- 
gan the  delivery  of  his  sermon.*  He 
thus  got  himself  ready  to  pounce  upon 
any  deviations  the  speaker  made  from 
the  orthodox  orthoepy.  After  the  ser- 
vices were  finished,  he  never  failed  to 
admonish  the  culprit  of  his  errors.  De- 
lany seemed  to  look  upon  this  course  as 

*  '  Observations  Upon  Lord  Orrery's  Re- 
marks on  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Dr.  Jona- 
than Swift'  (1754),  p.  206. 

62 


PRONUNCIATION 

much  to  Swift's  credit.  It  evinced  a 
disinterested  desire  on  his  part  to  ren- 
der his  subordinates  perfect  in  every 
particular.  He  could  hardly  have  ex- 
pected it  to  contribute  to  the  fervor 
and  effectiveness  of  a  pulpit  orator,  to 
be  conscious  that  all  the  while  he  is  de- 
livering his  discourse  there  sits  before 
him  the  sternest  of  judges,  intent  upon 
noting  the  words  he  uses,  not  for  their 
fitness  to  impart  spiritual  instruction, 
but  for  the  way  they  are  pronounced. 
Here,  too,  comes  in  the  ever-recurring 
question,  Who  taught  Swift  his  pro- 
nunciation? He  was  born  in  Ireland. 
Nearly  all  his  life  was  spent  there  be- 
fore he  attained  his  majority.  It  is 
natural  to  assume  that  he  was  affected 
by  the  peculiarities  of  the  speech  he 
was  accustomed  to  hear  constantly  dur- 
ing the  impressionable  days  of  boy- 
63 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

hood  and  youth.  Assuredly,  if  his 
usage  was  represented  accurately  by 
Sheridan,  he  indulged  in  pronuncia- 
tions which  would  have  been  charac- 
terized in  England,  at  least  later,  as 
Irishisms. 

The  pronunciation  originally  derived 
in  the  manner  just  stated,  Sheridan  tells 
us,  had  been  modified  and  developed  by 
him  to  bring  it  into  full  accord  with  that 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  He  had 
studied  with  care  the  usage  that  pre- 
vailed in  the  best  society.  This  he  had 
been  privileged  to  enter  everywhere. 
Accordingly,  he  was  fitted  both  by  early 
training  and  by  later  investigation  of 
the  subject  to  act  as  a  guide  to  others. 
Any  one  so  disposed  can  now  accept 
Sheridan  at  his  own  valuation.  But  not 
so  did  his  contemporaries.  Naturally, 
rival  lexicographers  would  criticise  his 
64 


PRONUNCIATION 

orthoepy  with  severity.  That  was  both 
a  personal  privilege  and  a  professional 
duty.  But  his  work  did  not  escape  ridi- 
cule from  those  who  had  no  interest  in 
any  of  the  other  pronouncing  diction- 
aries issuing  from  the  press.  In  particu- 
lar his  Irishisms,  as  they  were  called, 
were  made  a  constant  subject  of  re- 
proach. There  are  a  few  words,  for  in- 
stance, in  which  5  followed  by  m  has  the 
sound  ordinarily  denoted  by  sh.  Sheri- 
dan extended  this  peculiarity  to  a  num- 
ber of  others — in  fact,  to  all  beginning 
with  the  prefix  super.  If  this  sound  was 
heard  in  sure  and  sugar  and  issue,  he 
seemed  to  see  no  reason  why  it  should 
not  be  found  in  suicide  and  superstition. 
Accordingly,  the  first  syllables  of  these 
he  pronounced  as  if  they  were  spelled 
shoo-icide,  shooper-stition.  From  this 
and  other  views  of  his  there  was,  natu- 
6s 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

rally,  dissent.  Indeed,  a  little  later  a 
pamphlet  was  brought  out,  and  ran 
through  several  editions,  entitled  'A 
Caution  to  Gentlemen  Who  Use  Sheri- 
dan's Dictionary.'  It  praised  him  high- 
ly in  many  ways;  but  as  regards  or- 
thoepy, no  mercy  was  shown  to  his 
imputed  errors.  One  damning  charge 
there  was,  from  which  it  was  impossi- 
ble for  him  to  free  himself.  "He  was," 
said  his  critic,  "an  Irishman;  and  to 
the  last  period  of  his  life  his  origin 
was  obvious  in  his  pronunciation." 

Next  came  Walker.  Like  Sheridan, 
no  small  share  of  his  life  had  been  spent 
in  the  theatrical  profession.  Much  of 
the  time  he  had  been  under  Garrick  him- 
self, and  had  noted  with  care  the  pro- 
nunciation of  the  greatest  actor  who 
ever  trod  the  English  stage.  But  it  was 
the  favor  he  met  with  in  the  lectures  he 
66 


PRONUNCIATION 

went  about  delivering  on  elocution  that 
led  him  to  turn  his  attention  to  the  com- 
pilation of  a  pronouncing  dictionary. 
The  result  of  his  labors  was  not  made 
known  until  some  years  after  the  ap- 
pearance of  Sheridan's  similar  work, 
but  it  had  been  prepared  long  before. 
As  early  as  1774  Walker  published  a 
quarto  pamphlet  dedicated  to  Garrick, 
outlining  the  general  idea  of  a  pronounc- 
ing dictionary  on  a  plan  entirely  new. 
It  further  contained  observations  on 
several  words  which  were  pronounced 
differently.  An  advertisement  accom- 
panying it  informed  the  reader  that  the 
proposed  work  was  then  ready  for  the 
press,  would  be  comprised  in  two  vol- 
umes, and  would  be  delivered  to  sub- 
scribers at  the  price  of  a  guinea  and  a 
half.  But  the  appeal  for  subscriptions 
met  with  no  adequate  response.  As  a 
67 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

contemporary  periodical  observed,  the 
plan  was  above  both  the  comprehension 
and  the  pockets  of  the  public.  The  two 
volumes  dwindled  into  a  single  one, 
which  came  out  the  next  year.  In  it 
the  words  followed  one  another  accord- 
ing to  their  terminations.  At  a  some- 
what later  period  the  work  was  entitled, 
what  it  really  was,  a  Rhyming  Diction- 
ary. As  such  it  has  held  its  own  from 
that  time  to  the  present  day.  It  was 
not,  however,  until  1791  that  the  first 
edition  appeared  of  the  regular  pro- 
nouncing dictionary,  which  formed  the 
great  labor  of  Walker's  life. 

Of  all  the  eighteenth-century  ortho- 
epists  Walker  is  entitled  to  much  the 
most  consideration.  This  is  not  due  en- 
tirely to  the  fact  that  he  became  gen- 
erally accepted  as  an  authority,  and  in 
consequence  of  that  acceptance  extend- 
68 


PRONUNCIATION 

ed  far  and  wide  the  usage  he  recom- 
mended. He  is  now  of  interest  and  im- 
portance because  of  the  attitude  he  as- 
sumed towards  pronunciation  itself,  and 
the  Hght  he  threw  upon  the  differences 
which  then  prevailed.  He  was  not  con- 
tent with  recording  usage  as  he  found 
it,  or  fancied  that  he  had  found  it.  He 
had  views  of  his  own  as  to  the  principles 
by  which  it  should  be  governed.  These 
he  constantly  reinforced  by  pointing 
out  examples  of  their  violation.  He 
saw  clearly  and  admitted  fully  that 
the  correctest  theoretical  pronunciation 
could  not  hold  its  ground  against  the 
pronunciation  of  cultivated  society, 
however  contrary  the  latter  might  be 
to  analogy.  But  while  he  recognized 
the  binding  power  of  the  usage  of  the 
superior  class,  he  reserved  the  right  to 
protest  against  the  rightfulness  of  the 
69 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

autliority  which  he  felt  compelled  to 
obey.  When  this  polite  usage  varied, 
he  pointed  out  which  he  deemed  the 
better  way,  and  strove  to  induce  men 
to  follow  it.  He  entreated,  he  inveighed. 
His  work  is  so  full  of  comments  upon 
different  existing  pronunciations  that  it 
must  always  be  of  peculiar  value  to  any 
one  interested  in  the  history  of  orthoepy ; 
and  there  will  be  constant  occasion  in 
the  course  of  these  pages  to  note  his 
criticisms  of  others,  to  cite  his  state- 
ments about  the  then  current  usage,  and 
occasionally  to  record  his  sorrows,  for 
his  subject  was  one  he  took  very  seri- 
ously. Walker,  indeed,  had  but  little  of 
the  special  knowledge  which  is  now 
deemed  indispensable  to  the  orthoepist. 
That  was  a  deficiency  which  he  shared 
with  his  contemporaries.  But  in  his 
way  he  was  a  hard  student  of  his  subject, 
70 


PRONUNCIATION 

as  well  as  a  keen  observer  of  the  pro- 
nunciations prevalent  in  his  day.  There 
was  ample  reason,  therefore,  for  the 
favor  his  work  met  with;  and  if  men 
were  disposed  to  submit  to  authority  at 
all,  his  was  certainly  as  satisfactory  as 
any  which  presented  itself. 

Not  that  Walker's  assertions  and  in- 
ferences are  to  be  always  received  with 
the  trusting  faith  we  give  to  a  divine 
revelation.  In  his  comments  upon  what 
is  and  what  ought  to  be,  he  was  by  no 
means  free  from  the  influence  of  the  as- 
sociations by  which  he  had  long  been 
surrounded.  He  was  sometimes  ruled 
by  theory  which  was  altogether  too  re- 
fined for  practice.  He  had  a  high  philo- 
sophical way  of  justifying  certain  pro- 
nunciations, which  is  much  more  enter- 
taining than  it  is  convincing.  Fierce  and 
pierce,  for  instance,  he  made  in  his  first 
71 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

work  to  ryme  with  verso.  It  was  what 
Milton  and  others  had  done  long  before. 
But  by  the  time  his  dictionary  appeared, 
Walker  became  aware  that  this  pro- 
nunciation, though  still  retained  upon 
the  stage,  was  not  the  pronunciation  of 
polite  society.  It  was  in  the  following 
way  he  explained  the  discrepancy:  "Act- 
ors," he  wrote,  "who  have  such  con- 
tinual occasion  to  express  the  passions, 
feel  a  propriety  in  giving  a  short  vowel 
sound  to  a  word  denoting  a  rapid  and 
violent  emotion;  and,  therefore,  though 
the  pronunciation  may  be  said  to  be 
grammatically  improper,  it  is  philo- 
sophically right."  Much  the  same  sort 
of  explanation  was  given  of  cheerful  and 
fearful,  where  the  first  syllable  of  each 
was  permitted  by  him  to  be  sounded  as 
cher  and  fer.  The  refinements  in  which 
he  occasionally  indulged  may  be  illus- 
72 


PRONUNCIATION 

trated  by  his  account  of  the  circum- 
stances under  which  it  is  proper  to 
sound  the  g  of  the  ending  -ing,  and  when 
not.  This  was  then  a  subject  of  dispute 
and,  as  we  are  told,  a  cause  of  great  em- 
barrassment. Walker  had  his  way  of 
settling  the  difficulty,  and  he  announced 
it  in  1783  in  a  little  work  of  his,  then 
published,  entitled  '  Hints  for  Improve- 
ment in  the  Art  of  Reading.'  Accord- 
ing to  it,  two  syllables  ending  in  the 
same  sound  cannot  properly  follow  each 
other.  The  repetition  had  a  very  bad 
effect  upon  the  ear.  Accordingly,  when 
the  verb  itself  ends  in  -ing,  the  g  of  the 
present  participle  must  not  be  heard; 
when  not  so  ending,  it  must  be.  In 
consequence,  the  present  participles  of 
ring,  sing,  and  swing  must  be  pronounced 
ring-in,  sing-in,  swing-in.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  participles  of  pin,  begin, 
73 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

and  sin  the  presence  of  the  g  should  be 
distinctly  manifested.  If  this  rule  were 
not  observed,  we  should  have  in  each 
case  the  "same  disgusting  repetition" 
of  the  same  sound. 

Walker,  like  liis  predecessor,  was  care- 
ful to  give  us  his  reasons  for  being  ac- 
cepted as  an  authority.  He,  too,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  account,  had  been 
the  chosen  companion  of  the  best  and 
the  highest  in  the  land.  But  he  was  far 
from  approving  of  the  pronunciation 
taught  by  Sheridan,  also  a  representa- 
tive of  the  most  cultivated-.,  society. 
"The  numerous  instances,"  he  wrote, 
"  I  have  given  of  impropriety,  incon- 
sistency, and  want  of  acquaintance  with 
the  analysis  of  the  language  sufficiently 
show  how  imperfect  I  think  his  diction- 
ary is  upon  the  whole."  Walker,  in 
fact,  felt  free  to  criticise  any  or  all  of 
74 


PRONUNCIATION 

his  predecessors.  Nares,  already  men- 
tioned, had,  in  1784,  brought  out  a  work 
on  English  orthoepy,  though  he  is  now- 
known  mainly  by  his  glossary  of  Eliza- 
bethan words  and  phrases.  Of  him 
Walker  declared  that  he  "had  on  many 
occasions  mistaken  the  best  usage." 
With  his  own  possession  of  that  some- 
what vague  article  he  was  supremely 
satisfied,  and  he  was  good  enough  to  let 
us  know  how  he  came  to  secure  it.  In 
the  advertisement  to  the  later  editions  of 
his  dictionary  he  informed  us  that  he 
was  bom  within  a  few  miles  of  London, 
had  lived  there  almost  all  his  life,  and 
had  there  also  exercised  himself  in  pub- 
lic speaking  for  many  years.  He  was, 
in  truth,  profoundly  impressed  with  his 
own  opportunities  and  qualifications. 
"To  such  a  person,"  he  proudly  re- 
marked of  himself,  "if  to  any  one,  the 
75 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

true  pronunciation  of  the  language  must 
be  very  familiar."  The  vernacular  in- 
stinct, he  went  on  to  tell  us,  that  was 
his  own  by  right  of  birth,  had  been  de- 
veloped by  constant  study  and  by  con- 
stant association  with  the  best  speak- 
ers. 

Self-confidence  of  this  sort  is  an  ef- 
fective auxiliary  in  most  struggles;  but 
in  matters  of  usage  it  is  more  than  half 
the  battle.  No  small  share  of  Walker's 
success  in  being  received  as  an  authority 
was  due  to  his  calm  assertion  that  when 
it  came  to  pronunciation  he  was  the 
man,  and  on  that  subject  wisdom  would 
die  with  him.  But  the  weary  seeker 
after  an  unassailable  standard  was  not 
permitted  to  escape  from  the  distrac- 
tion of  conflicting  authorities  by  repos- 
ing peacefully  in  Walker's  arms.  If 
that  lexicographer  found  fault  with 
76 


PRONUNCIATION 

Sheridan,  there  were  those  who  found 
fault  with  him.  Not  to  speak  of  others, 
Knowles,  in  1835,  brought  out  his  pro- 
nouncing dictionary.  On  the  title-page 
he  proclaimed  himself  the  father  of  the 
author  of  'Virginius,'  and  also  the 
nephew  of  Thomas  Sheridan.  It  was  to 
be  expected  that  the  nephew  of  his 
uncle  should  not  speak  too  well  of  that 
uncle's  depreciator.  He  asserted  that 
where  Sheridan  had  committed  one 
error  Walker  had  committed  two.  Cen- 
sures from  such  a  quarter  might  per- 
haps be  attributed  to  hereditary  hos- 
tility. That  is  a  view,  however,  which 
cannot  be  taken  of  the  criticism  made 
by  Smart,  who,  in  1836,  brought  out  a 
revision  of  Walker's  dictionary,  "adapt- 
ed," says  the  title-page,  "to  the  present 
state  of  literature  and  science."  In  a 
preface  to  a  later  edition  of  this  work, 
77 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Smart  loftily  declared  that  the  authors 
of  previous  dictionaries  had,  with  few 
exceptions,  been  Irishmen  or  Scotch- 
men. No  wonder  that  he  felt  outraged 
at  the  presumption  which  had  attempt- 
ed to  override  the  disabilities  of  birth. 
Furthermore,  he  tells  us,  he  had  been  in- 
formed that  Walker  himself  was  a  York- 
shireman,  and  was  confident  that  the 
information  must  be  correct  from  cer- 
tain pronunciations  which  he  specified. 
"This  Northern  peculiarity,"  he  added, 
"along  with  others  of  provincial  origin, 
is  unconsciously  copied  by  provincial 
editors  of  subsequent  dictionaries,  who 
pay  more  deference  to  Walker's  correct- 
ness of  ear  than  my  experience  warrants 
me  in  conceding." 

As  Walker  had  taken  particular  pains 
to  state  that  he  was  bom  near  London, 
and  had  spent  most  of  his  life  there,  it 
78 


PRONUNCIATION 

was  somewhat  hard  upon  him  to  be  dis- 
dainfully termed  a  Yorkshireman  by  his 
own  reviser,  and  in  addition  to  have  the 
pure  London  pronunciation,  upon  which 
he  had  prided  himself,  stigmatized  as 
provincial  by  another  cockney.  Smart, 
in  his  turn,  did  not  neglect  to  disclose  to 
us  the  foundation  of  his  right  to  be  deem- 
ed an  authority.  It  was  nothing  but  a 
variation  of  the  same  old  tune.  He  was 
bom  and  bred  in  the  West  End  of  Lon- 
don. From  the  outset  of  his  career  his 
attention  had  been  turned  to  the  subject 
of  orthoepy.  Early  in  life  he  had  pro- 
duced a  work  on  that  subject,  entitled 
'A  Practical  Grammar  of  English  Pro- 
nunciation.' He  had  been  employed 
as  a  teacher  of  elocution  in  the  first 
families  of  the  kingdom,  not  excepting 
the  family  of  the  highest  person.  He 
had  lectured  frequently  before  literary 

79 


PRONUNCIATION 

and  scientific  institutions  in  the  metrop- 
olis, and  during  the  same  period  had 
kept  up  a  constant  intercourse  with  men 
of  letters.     What  more  could  be  asked? 


II 

THERE  are  two  things  that  strike 
the  attention  of  any  one  who 
makes  a  careful  examination  of  diction- 
aries and  of  the  orthoepy  set  forth  by 
the  men  who  prepare  them.  The  first  is 
that  the  pronunciation  of  a  certain  num- 
ber of  words  is  represented  in  them  dif- 
ferently. The  second  is  that  the  com- 
pilers of  all  of  them  assert  their  own  in- 
fallibility or  assume  it.  Each  one  of 
these  has  a  serene  confidence  in  the  con- 
clusions which  he  has  reached.  Each 
one  is  thoroughly  convinced  of  his  ability 
to  act  as  a  guide  to  others.  The  early 
compilers,  as  we  have  seen,  made  the 
mistake  of  giving  the  reasons  upon  which 
6  8i 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

their  faith  in  themselves  was  founded. 
Tliey  assured  us  that  they  had  spent 
their  lives  wholly  or  in  part  in  a  region 
where  the  pure  article  of  pronunciation 
was  supposed  to  be  held  in  keeping  by 
the  nobility  of  rank  and  of  intellect.  To 
them,  accordingly,  had  been  vouchsafed 
the  very  best  opportunities  for  securing 
this  inestimable  jewel.  They  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  giving  instruction  in  fam- 
ilies that  belonged  to  the  highest  circles. 
They  had  associated  familiarly  with  the 
most  distinguished  men  of  science  and 
letters.  It  is,  therefore,  naturally  an- 
noying to  the  seeker  after  positive  truth 
to  find  these  intimate  friends  of  scholars 
and  statesmen  disagreeing  among  them- 
selves— in  fact,  manifesting  at  times  a 
thinly  veiled  contempt  for  the  opinions 
of  their  rivals,  and  implying  that  the  so- 
ciety in  which  these  had  learned  their 
82 


PRONUNCIATION 

way  of  pronouncing  was  no  better  than 
it  should  be. 

It  is  more  than  annoying;  it  is  dis- 
couraging. For  their  differences  are 
sometimes  very  marked.  From  the  out- 
set there  has  inevitably  been  the  ever- 
lasting contest  between  the  sticklers  for 
abstract  propriety  and  the  advocates  of 
what  has  become  the  general  practice. 
This  contention  has  ended  sometimes  in 
the  success  of  the  one  party,  sometimes 
in  that  of  the  other.  In  colonel  we  have 
seen  the  triumph  of  the  latter.  We  can 
offset  it,  however,  by  the  triumph  of  the 
former  in  China.  Lilac  may  also  be 
added.  In  polite  society  this  word  was 
once  frequently  pronounced  as  if  written 
lay  lock,  and  indeed  it  was  sometimes  so 
printed.  Though  common,  it  appears  to 
have  never  been  the  exclusive  pronun- 
ciation, and  has  now  become  dialectic  or 

83 


THH    STANDARD    OF 

provincial.  But  the  success  of  abstract 
propriety  will  perhaps  seem  most  strik- 
ing to  many  in  the  case  of  the  words  cu- 
cumber and  asparagus.  In  each  of  these 
two  it  has  taken  practically  a  century 
to  establish  the  present  usage.  Sheri- 
dan knows  no  such  pronunciation  as 
cowcumbcr ,  and  while  he  inserts  sparrow- 
grass,  he  merely  says  of  it  that  it  is  "cor- 
rupted from  asparagus."  But  Walker 
manfully  recognized  the  actual  situation. 
He  observes  regretfully  of  cucumber  that 
' '  it  seems  too  firmly  fixed  in  the  sound  of 
cowcumber  to  be  altered."  He  admits, 
as  did  Johnson  and  others,  that  aspara- 
gus is  the  theoretically  correct  form ;  but 
he  adds  that  "the  corruption  of  the  word 
into  sparrow-grass  is  so  general  that 
asparagus  has  an  air  of  stiffness  and 
pedantry." 

Walker,  indeed,  regarded  the  culinary 
84 


PRONUNCIATION 

art  as  a  prolific  source  of  orthoepic  evil. 
He  remarked  of  frumenty  that  it  was  al- 
most universally  corrupted  into  fur- 
menty  and  sometimes  into  furmete.  ' '  I 
believe,"  he  added,  dejectedly,  "it 
is  seldom  found  that  words  employed 
in  the  concerns  of  cookery  are  ever 
recovered  from  irregularity."  There 
was  some  justification  for  the  view, 
though  but  little  for  the  despondency 
he  manifested  about  it.  We  learn  from 
a  treatise  of  the  lexicographer  Bailey, 
published  in  1726,  that  a  then  common 
and  an  apparently  fully  authorized  pro- 
nunciation of  onion  was  innian.  This 
has  lasted  down  to  the  present  day; 
but  long  before  Walker's  time  it  had 
fallen,  save  in  Ireland,  from  its  high 
estate.  Even  he  himself  is  found  ex- 
ulting in  the  prospective  triumph  of  saw 
over  sas  as  the  representative  of  the  first 

85 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

syllable  of  sausage.  The  correct,  he 
told  us,  pronounced  the  word  saw'sidge; 
the  v^ulgar  sas'sidgc.  Yet  he  had  to  ad- 
mit that  in  the  latter  class  were  included 
Sheridan  and  some  other  orthoepists; 
nor  in  this  instance  did  he  feel  so  sure  of 
the  prevalence  or  superiority  of  his  own 
usage  as  to  venture  to  exclude  abso- 
lutely the  other. 

It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however, 
that  for  some  of  these  apparently  irreg- 
ular pronunciations  there  was  at  one 
time  full  justification  in  the  orthog- 
raphy. Notably  was  this  true  of  cu- 
cumber. The  pronunciation  cowcumher 
was  not  a  corruption.  During  a  con- 
siderable period  of  time  that  was  not 
only  the  prevalent  but  a  legitimate 
spelling  of  the  word.  When  Mr.  Pepys 
tells  us  in  his  Diary  *  that  a  certain  gen- 
*  August  22,  1663. 
86 


PRONUNCIATION 

tieman  was  "dead  of  eating  cowcum- 
bers,"  he  was  conforming  in  his  orthog- 
raphy to  the  practice  of  his  age.  We 
may  pardon  him  even  another  speUing 
of  the  same  sort  on  the  ground  of  its 
doubtless  exact  representation  of  his 
pronunciation.  "Thence  to  the  Gray- 
hound  in  Fleet  Street,"  he  wrote,  "and 
there  drank  some  raspberry  sack  and  eat 
some  sasages,  and  so  home  very  merry."  * 
But  the  case  is  different  with  sparrow- 
grass.  The  way  had  been  made  open 
for  this  form  by  the  frequent  and  prob- 
ably general  dropping,  both  in  speaking 
and  writing,  of  the  initial  a  of  the  word 
from  which  it  was  corrupted.  Sparagus 
was  common  in  print,  and  undoubtedly 
much  more  so  in  conversation.  The  tran- 
sition from  it  to  sparrow-grass  was  easy. 
The  latter,  accordingly,  was  an  attempt 
'November  12,  i66i. 
87 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

on  the  part  of  popular  etymology  to  at- 
tach a  sort  of  sense  to  a  strange  word  it 
could  not  easily  comprehend. 

But  neither  in  this  case  nor  in  that  of 
cucumber  did  these  pronunciations  die  out 
easily  or  early  from  the  practice  of  polite 
society.  The  change  was  gradual.  No 
well-taught  person,  Smart  declared,  in 
1836,  in  the  preface  to  his  revision  of 
Walker,  would  any  longer  say  cowcmn- 
her  or  sparrow-grass,  although  any  other 
pronunciation  of  cucumber  and  aspara- 
gus would  have  been  pedantic  thirty 
years  before.  In  1835  Knowles,  too, 
had  felt  called  on  to  denounce  cowcum- 
ber,  which  he  mentions  as  still  the  vul- 
gar pronunciation  of  cucumber.  It  is  a 
natural  inference,  however,  from  his 
further  comment,  that  though  he  said 
vulgar,  it  was  the  word  vulgar  in  its 
original  and  not  in  its  derived  sense 
88 


PRONUNCIATION 

which  he  had  in  mind.  "Neither  fash- 
ion nor  general  custom,"  he  added, 
"ought  to  sanction  the  gross  corruption 
of  this  word."  In  fact,  any  pronuncia- 
tion once  widely  prevalent  gives  up  the 
ghost  reluctantly.  In  some  quarters 
cowcumher  can  doubtless  still  be  heard. 
Sparrow-grass  has  gone,  it  is  true,  from 
the  speech  of  the  educated ;  but  it  is  still 
no  uncommon  thing  to  hear  in  grocers' 
shops  asparagus  simply  designated  as 
grass. 

This  survival  of  ancient  usage  ex- 
plains the  existence  among  the  unedu- 
cated of  many  pronunciations  which,  at 
a  former  period,  were  regularly  employed 
by  the  educated.  The  language  of  the 
illiterate  is,  to  a  great  extent,  archaic. 
It  retains  words  and  meanings  and 
grammatical  constructions  which  were 
once  in  the  best  of  use,  but  have  ceased 
89 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

to  be  used  by  the  best.  This  is  as  true 
of  pronunciation  as  it  is  of  vocabulary 
and  grammar.  In  this  respect  the 
archaic  nature  of  the  speech  of  the  un- 
educated manifests  itself  in  practices 
which  would  be  little  expected  to  exist. 
It  sometimes  affects  the  place  of  the  ac- 
cent. In  our  tongue  it  is  generally  pop- 
ular usage  which  is  disposed  to  lay  the 
stress  upon  a  syllable  far  from  the  end  of 
the  word.  It  is  against  this  tendency 
that  sticklers  for  the  observance  of  the 
Latin  or  Greek  quantity  have  fought, 
as  we  shall  see  later,  most  stubbornly. 
Yet,  curiously  enough,  this  practice, 
based  upon  classical  authority,  lingers 
sometimes  in  the  mouths  of  the  uncul- 
tivated long  after  it  has  been  abandoned 
by  the  cultivated.  Readers  of  Milton 
are  well  aware  that  with  him  blasphe- 
mous is  invariably  pronounced  blasphe'- 
90 


PRONUNCIATION 

mous.  It  was  probably  the  general 
usage  of  the  educated  men  of  his  time. 
No  one  now  pronounces  it  so  save  the 
unlettered.  They  remain  faithful  to 
the  classical  quantity,  and  are  treated 
with  contumely  for  it  by  such  as  deem 
it  both  their  right  and  duty  to  be  horri- 
fied by  hearing  illustrate  pronounced  as 
ill'ustrate.  Similar  observations  may  be 
made  of  contrary  and  mischievous .  Char- 
acter also  had  once,  perhaps  universally, 
the  accent  on  the  penult.  This  prac- 
tice was  given  up  at  last,  but  not  till 
after  usage  had  long  wavered  between 
placmg  the  stress  on  the  first  or  the 
second  syllable.  Yet  in  Ireland  the  pe- 
nultimate accent  continued  with  the  ed- 
ucated to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  at  least;  and  with  the  unedu- 
cated it  continues  to  the  present  day. 
'  The  History  of  Sir  Charles  Grandison  ' 
91 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

appeared  in  1754.  In  it  Richardson 
introduces  a  certain  Captain  Salmonet, 
who,  he  tells  us,  spoke  English  as  a 
Frenchman,  "but  pronounced  the  word 
character  as  an  Irishman." 

It  is  not,  however,  the  accentuation 
which  best  exemplifies  the  survival  in 
the  speech  of  the  uneducated  of  what 
was  once  the  usage  of  the  educated. 
That  is  better  seen  in  the  pronunciation 
of  the  vowels.  According  to  the  few  or- 
thoepic  guides  which  have  come  down 
from  the  late  seventeenth  century  and 
the  early  eighteenth,  the  termination  -ture 
must  have  had  then  pretty  generally  the 
sound  now  indicated  by  -tcr.  We  can  still 
hear  it  at  the  present  day,  and,  further- 
more, see  it  represented  in  the  words 
spelled  as  7iater  and  pictcr  and  critter. 
In  certain  instances  these  usages  seem 
to  have  held  out  long  in  good  society. 
92 


PRONUNCIATION 

Walker  felt  called  upon  to  denounce 
what  he  termed  a  vulgar  pronunciation 
of  nature.  This  he  gave  as  na-ter. 
Such  a  practice,  he  observed,  could  not 
be  too  carefully  avoided.  But,  clearly, 
no  such  caution  against  its  use  would 
have  been  introduced  into  his  dictionary 
had  not  this  so-called  vulgar  pronun- 
ciation been  frequently  heard  from  the 
lips  of  persons  who  could  not  be  deemed 
vulgar.  Nor  is  there  any  particular 
need  of  our  assuming  to  ourselves  a 
special  superiority  in  this  matter  over 
our  fathers.  Of  the  two  pronunciations 
oi  figure  authorized  in  most  dictionaries, 
that  which  gives  the  final  syllable  the 
sound  indicated  by  tir  or  er  is  the  one  to 
which,  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  weight 
of  authority  inclines.  But  the  two  ways 
have  long  existed,  and  both  have  had 
their  advocates.  Walker  noted  the  dif- 
93 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

ference  in  his  day.  "There  is,"  he  said, 
"a  coarse  and  a  delicate  pronunciation 
of  this  word  and  its  compounds."  The 
coarse  he  represented  by  figgur,  the  deli- 
cate by  fig-yure.  His  adjectives  show 
clearly  where  his  preferences  lay;  in- 
deed, it  was  only  this  delicate  pronun- 
ciation, as  he  termed  it,  which  he  sanc- 
tioned. Yet  his  authority  was  insuffi- 
cient to  establish  the  universality  of  the 
practice  he  approved;  and  though  the 
fuller  pronunciation  is  likely  in  time  to 
drive  out  the  other,  it  will  have  a  long 
struggle  before  it  succeeds. 

An  interesting  illustration  of  these 
survivals  which  is  still  retained  in  polite 
usage  is  seen  in  the  word  clerk.  It  is 
not  until  very  lately  that  an  English 
dictionary,  as  distinguished  from  an 
American,  has  recognized  any  other  pro- 
nunciation of  it  than  dark.  Yet  we  are 
94 


PRONUNCIATION 

told  by  the  most  recent  authority  on  the 
subject  that  chirk,  as  regularly  heard  in 
the  United  States,  has  of  late  "become 
somewhat  frequent  in  London  and  its 
neighborhood."^  Such  a  pronunciation 
was  sure  to  come,  whether  it  had  previ- 
ously existed  in  the  United  States  or  not. 
Clerk  is  simply  following  the  course 
that  has  already  been  taken  by  no 
small  number  of  words  which  have  the 
combination  of  the  letters  e  and  r. 
Down  to  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century  merchant  was  ordinarily  pro- 
nounced as  if  it  were  spelled  marchant. 
So  Sheridan  gave  it  in  his  dictionary. 
For  thus  doing  he  was  taken  to  task 
by  brother  orthoepists,  who  denounced 
him  as  having  sanctioned  a  sound  of  e 

'  '  New  Historical  Dictionary,'  under  clerk. 
The  representation  of  its  pronunciation  by 
cliirk  is  my  own. 

95 


THE    SrANDARD   OF 

which  had  become  vulgar  and  was  heard 
only  among  the  lower  order  of  people. 
Here,  as  in  general,  the  uneducated 
clung  to  the  usage  which  had  died  out 
among  the  educated.  The  former,  in- 
deed, still  continue  to  give  at  times  to 
certain  and  service  and  servant  and  ser- 
mon and  serpent  the  pronunciation  sartin 
and  sarvice  and  sarvant  and  sarmon  and 
sarpent.  Perhaps  it  was  the  analogy 
of  this  last  word  which  led  them,  fur- 
ther, to  add  a  t  to  vermin  and  call  it 
varmint. 

The  custom  of  giving  the  sound  of  a 
to  the  e  of  these  words  did  not  die  out 
rapidly.  As  late  as  his  own  day  Walker 
had  to  admit  that  "even  among  the 
better  sort  we  sometimes  hear  the  salu- 
tation, SVr,  yotir  sarvant !  though  this  pro- 
nunciation of  the  word  singly  would  be 
looked  upon  as  a  mark  of  the  lowest  vul- 
96 


PRONUNCIATION 

garity."  Clargyas  the  pronunciation  of 
clergy  has  scarcely  been  heard  since  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  clerk  will,  in 
course  of  time,  inevitably  partake  of  its 
fortunes.  Serjeant  and  it,  and  a  few 
names  of  places,  are  now  the  only  ones 
which  hold  out  against  the  general  ten- 
dency, but  they  are  not  likely  to  hold  out 
forever.  Jersey  was  once  pronounced 
Jarsey  occasionally,  if  not  regularly. 
It  is  doubtful  if  Hertford  and  Derby 
can  withstand  permanently  the  ortho- 
epic  pressure  which  is  steadily  directed, 
though  without  conscious  intention, 
against  the  sound  of  ar  in  these  words. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  to  be  kept  in  mind 
that  in  changing  the  sound  we  are  not 
conforming  to  the  orthography.  We 
are  simply  going  from  one  kind  of  mis- 
pronunciation to  another.  In  clerical 
we  have  the  genuine  sound  of  e;  but  we 
7  97 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

do  not  have  it  in  clergy  or  clerk,  whether 
we  pronounce  these  words  according  to 
the  one  method  or  the  other. 

But  the  most  widespread  and  still 
the  most  noticeable  of  these  survivals  is 
that  which  gives  to  the  digraph  oi  the 
diphthongal  sound  of  i.  At  the  present 
day,  when  we  set  out  to  represent  illiter- 
ate pronunciation  of  certain  common 
words,  we  write  bile  for  boil,  brile  for 
broil,  jine  for  join,  He  for  oil,  pint  for 
point,  pison  for  poison,  spile  for  spoil. 
There  was  a  time  when,  in  most  and  per- 
haps in  all  of  these  words,  as  well  as  in 
some  others,  the  sound  denoted  by  the 
spelling  with  i  indicated  the  usage  of 
the  educated.  The  practice  threat- 
ened to  extend  itself  to  every  word  in 
which  oi  appeared.  In  the  famous 
triplet  of  Pope  we  see  it  fully  exem- 
plified : 

98 


PRONUNCIATION 

"Waller  was  smooth;  but  Dryden  taught  to 
join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march,  and  energy  divine." 

Here  we  see  join  ryming  to  line  and 
divine.  That  jine  was  Pope's  regular 
way  of  pronouncing  the  verb  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  It  is  further  perfectly  fair 
to  assume  that  in  so  doing  he  followed 
the  common  cultivated  practice  of  his 
time.  The  concordance  to  his  works — 
excluding  the  Homeric  translations — 
shows  that  join  occurs  in  them  at  the 
end  of  a  verse  just  fourteen  times.  The 
words  with  which  it  rymes  are  design, 
dine,  divine,  line,  mine,  nine,  Proserpine, 
shine,  thine,  and  vine.  In  a  similar  way 
the  past  tense  joined  rymes  with  find, 
mankind,  mind,  and  refined,  and  like- 
wise joins  with  mines.  This  must  be 
deemed  conclusive  as  to  the  pronuncia- 
99 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

tion  accepted  generally,  if  not  univer- 
sally, in  the  circle  in  which  moved  the 
greatest  of  the  then  living  English  men 
of  letters.  Moreover,  in  the  only  in- 
stance in  which  Pope  used  the  past 
tense  of  spoiled  as  the  final  word  of  a 
line  it  rymed  with  wild. 

But  we  need  not  go  to  the  poets  to 
infer  what  must  have  been  the  facts. 
Plenty  of  direct  evidence  on  this  point 
is  furnished  by  the  orthoepists  them- 
selves. During  the  latter  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century  they  were  much  dis- 
turbed by  the  common  practice  of  pro- 
nouncing oi  as  f.  Would  it  become 
universal?  Fears  were  entertained  and 
expressed  that  its  proper  sound  would 
disappear  from  the  speech.  Kenrick 
deplored  the  fact  that  certain  words  had 
lost  it  almost  entirely.  "Such,"  said  he, 
"are  boil,  join,  and  many  others,  which 

lOO 


PRONUNCIATION 

it  would  now  appear  affected  to  pro- 
nounce otherwise  than  bile  and  jine." 
This  statement  was  made  in  1 7  7  3 .  About 
half  a  score  of  years  later  hope  for  the 
orthoepic  future  of  these  words  began 
to  revive.  It  still  required  courage,  in- 
deed, to  give  to  oi  its  proper  sound;  but 
courage  was  sometimes  not  lacking. 
"The banished  diphthong,"  wrote  Nares, 
"seems  at  length  to  be  upon  its  return; 
for  there  are  many  who  are  now  hardy 
enough  to  pronounce  boil  exactly  as 
they  do  toil,  join  like  coin,  etc."  ^  Nares 
seems  to  have  been  unaware  that  his 
very  comparisons  proved  the  pronuncia- 
tion he  favored  had  been  making  con- 
tinuous progress  for  more  than  a  hun- 
dred years .  E arlier  in  the  century  B alley 
represented  the  pronunciation  of  coin  by 
quine.  The  following  couplet  of  Dry- 
* '  Elements  of  Orthoepy,'  p.  74. 

lOI 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

den  shows  what  was  his  pronunciation 
of  toil: 

"  While  he,  withdrawn,  at   their  mad  labor 
smiles. 
And  safe  enjoys  the  Sabbath  of  his  toils."' 

There  was,  clearly,  difference  of  usage, 
however,  even  at  this  later  period,  about 
this  last  word.  But  a  little  while  before 
Nares  had  cited  its  diphthong  as  one 
correctly  sounded,  Kenrick  had  ob- 
served that  oil  and  toil  were  frequently 
pronounced  like  isle  and  tile.  The 
former  orthoepist  asserted,  indeed,  that 
the  only  real  objection  to  giving  the 
true  sound  to  oi  in  join  was  that  "it  is 
so  constantly  rhymed  to  fine,  line,  and 
the  like  by  our  best  poets."  ^ 

'  'Absalom   and   Achitophel,'    part  i.,  line 
912  (1681). 

''  Elements  of  Orthoepy,'  p.  74,  note. 


PRONUNCIATION 

There  was  really  no  ground  for  the 
anxiety  which  orthoepists  then  enter- 
tained about  the  possible  disappearance 
of  the  oi.  The  diphthong  had  been  for  a 
long  time  steadily  regaining  its  rights. 
By  the  end  of  the  century  Walker  felt 
justified  in  bestowing  upon  the  once 
common  pronunciation  the  epithet  vul- 
gar. This  is  the  adjective  which  ortho- 
epists most  affect  when  they  wish  to  de- 
nounce any  practice  to  which  they  take 
exception.  Walker  resorted  to  it  fre- 
quently, and  the  revolution  in  usage 
had  apparently  now  become  so  rapid 
that  he  could  venture  to  do  so  in  safety 
in  the  case  of  this  diphthong.  He  re- 
ferred to  the  habit  of  sounding  oi  as  i  as 
being  still  prevalent  among  the  vulgar. 
Whether  the  impHed  imputation  was 
true  then  or  not,  it  has  become  so  now. 
At  the  present  time  cultivated  speech 
103 


THK    STANDARD    OF 

preserves  this  relic  of  past  usage  only  in 
choir.  Even  here  the  exception  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  there  had  long  existed,  as 
there  still  exists,  another  spelling,  quire. 
This  is  the  representative  of  the  various 
forms  which  the  word  has  had  from  its 
first  introduction  into  the  language. 
That  took  place  near  the  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  These  forms  carried 
with  them  then  their  own  pronunciation. 
The  spelling  choir  is  not  found  till  the 
latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
For  a  good  while  after  it  was  Httle  used 
in  literature  as  distinct  from  technical 
works.  Its  late  appearance,  and  its 
comparatively  infrequent  employment 
for  the  time  immediately  following  its 
appearance,  prevented  it  from  affecting 
the  sound  of  the  diphthong. 

These  examples,  if  they  teach  noth- 
ing else,  suggest  the  possibility  that  pro- 
104 


PRONUNCIATION 

nunciations  which  are  now  looked  upon 
by  many  as  tests  of  good  breeding  and 
culture  may  come  in  time  to  be  reckoned 
vulgar.  Especially  will  this  be  the  case 
if  in  any  way  they  violate  the  analogies 
of  the  language.  It  is  usually  their 
anomalous  character  which  constitutes 
their  chief  recommendation  in  the  eyes 
of  those  who  assume  for  themselves 
peculiar  excellence  in  the  purity  of  their 
utterance.  It  is  this  same  anomalous 
character  which  threatens  the  perma- 
nence of  the  cherished  pronunciation. 
Yet  it  is  not  the  conflict  which  goes  on 
between  what  he  calls  the  common  and 
what  he  considers  the  proper  usage 
which  alone  vexes  the  soul  of  the  ortho- 
epist.  With  variations  already  existing, 
and  others  steadily  coming  to  exist,  he 
finds  himself  in  constant  perplexity. 
In   a   language   which   has   more   than 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

forty  sounds  to  be  represented,  and  with 
but  a  few  more  than  twenty  charac- 
ters to  represent  them,  pronunciation  is 
always  Hable  to  partake  of  a  certain  de- 
gree of  lawlessness.  This  is  true  in  par- 
ticular of  the  vowel  system.  There  ca- 
price and  fashion  have  the  opportunity 
to  do  their  perfect  work.  The  changes 
which  take  place  in  consequence  are 
rarely  the  result  of  any  principle,  or  of 
any  recognizable  orthoepic  influence. 
To  the  ordinary  observer  they  seem 
nothing  more  than  the  blind  results  of 
chance.  Yet  to  struggle  against  them 
is  usually  of  little  avail.  Orthoepists 
may  resort  to  entreaty  or  invective,  but 
in  spite  of  their  utmost  efforts  they  are 
often  compelled  to  acquiesce  in  pro- 
nunciations which  are  abhorrent  to 
their  souls. 

As  this  particular  field  is  practically 
io6 


PRONUNCIATION 

limitless,  all  that  can  be  done  here  is  to 
give  a  slight  glimpse  of  its  nature  by- 
pointing  out  one  or  two  instances  of  the 
conflict  which  at  times  has  gone  on  be- 
tween the  vowel  pronunciation  found  in 
literature  and  that  adopted  by  polite  so- 
ciety. In  such  cases,  literature,  as  a 
general  rule,  gets  distinctly  the  worst  of 
it.  Two  interesting  examples  are  wound 
and  wind.  From  the  outset  lexicogra- 
phers have  protested  against  giving  to 
the  ou  of  the  former  word  the  sound  of 
00,  as  heard,  for  illustration,  in  swoon. 
They  have  pointed  out  that  in  our  classic 
poetry  the  word  invariably  rymes  with 
such  words  as  sound,  found,  and  ground. 
Their  protests  have  been  of  but  little 
avail.  Most  of  them  continue,  indeed,  to 
authorize  the  old,  historic  pronunciation, 
and  some  of  them  to  denounce  the  fash- 
ionable one ;  but  they  have  to  admit  that 
107 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  spoken  language  has  been  too  much 
for  the  Hterary.  Even  more  decided 
has  been  the  triumph  of  wind  over  wind. 
The  latter  pronunciation  is,  or  at  least 
was,  the  only  one  known  to  English 
ryme.  Were  it  now  heard  in  conver- 
sation, the  listener  would  be  struck  with 
surprise,  and,  in  some  instances,  it  is  to 
be  feared,  would  be  troubled  with  lack  of 
comprehension.  Yet  against  this  per- 
version of  pronunciation,  as  they  re- 
garded it,  which  gives  the  short  sound 
to  i  in  this  word,  the  orthoepists  of  the 
eighteenth  century  fought  persistently 
and  sturdily.  It  was  a  corruption 
which  filled  the  soul  of  Swift  with  pecul- 
iar disgust.  The  person  employing  it 
in  his  presence  was  apt  to  bring  down 
upon  himself  the  great  Dean's  most  con- 
temptuous sarcasm.  "I  have  a  great 
mind  to  find  why  you  pronounce  it 
1 08 


PRONUNCIATION 

wtnd,"  he  would  say  to  the  offender. 
Neither  his  ridicule  nor  the  learned  ob- 
jections of  others  had  the  slightest  effect 
upon  the  fortunes  of  the  word. 

Full  as  striking  an  illustration  of  this 
indifference  to  orthoepic  sanctions  may 
be  seen  going  on  before  our  own  eyes. 
It  is  exhibited  in  the  case  of  either  and 
neither.  Of  both  these  words  it  is  to  be 
said  that,  as  far  back  as  we  can  trace 
the  pronunciation,  the  weight  of  usage 
as  well  as  of  authority  is  distinctly  in 
favor  of  giving  to  the  ei  the  sound  we 
call  long  e.  There  is  a  reason  for  this 
preference.  Nearly  all  the  words  in  our 
language  that  contain  this  digraph  have 
either  the  sound  heard  in  vein  or  that  in 
seize.  The  only  two  common  ones  in 
our  tongue,  so  far  as  I  can  recall,  in 
which  the  pronunciation  represented  by 
the  diphthongal  i  appears  are  height  and 
1 09 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

sleight;  and  these  were  sometimes  written 
also  with  the  simple  i  as  well  as  ei. 
Early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  how- 
ever, we  find  the  i  sound  recorded  as 
used  by  some  in  the  first  syllable  of 
either  and  neither.  It  had  doubtless  pre- 
vailed to  a  certain  extent  in  the  seven- 
teenth century.  But  it  seems  to  have 
existed  then,  and  for  a  long  time  after, 
rather  on  sufferance,  to  be  treated  as 
something  permissible  but  not  com- 
mendable. When  pronouncing  diction- 
aries came  into  vogue  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  this  pronuncia- 
tion was  generally  looked  at  askance  by 
their  compilers.  Buchanan  and  John- 
ston were  the  only  two,  as  far  as  I  can 
discover,  who  declared  unreservedly  in 
its  favor.  Both  of  these  men,  however, 
were  Scotchmen,  and  their  opinions  car- 
ried httle  weight.  On  the  other  hand, 
no 


PRONUNCIATION 

the  rest  of  the  orthoepists,  with  Sheridan 
and  Walker  at  their  head,  either  recog- 
nized exclusively  the  sound  of  e  in  the 
first  syllable  of  these  words  or  gave  it 
distinctly  the  preference.  This  attitude 
may  be  said  to  have  been  generally  con- 
tinued by  their  successors  down  to  the 
present  time.  Still  the  hostility  of  the 
most  widely  accepted  authorities  has 
failed  to  retard  the  progress  of  the  i  pro- 
nunciation in  these  words.  In  spite  of 
its  defiance  of  analogy,  it  has  steadily 
gained  ground.  It  is  perhaps  now  more 
prevalent  than  the  other;  at  least  it  is 
full  as  prevalent.  Fashion  has  either 
favored  it  or  has  been  supposed  to  favor 
it.  All  of  us  are  privileged  in  these 
latter  days  frequently  to  witness  painful 
struggles  put  forth  to  give  to  the  first 
syllable  of  these  words  the  sound  of  I  by 
those  who  have  been  brought  up  to  give 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

it  the  sound  of  e.  There  is  apparently 
an  impression  on  the  part  of  some  that 
such  a  pronunciation  estabHshes  on  a 
firm  foundation  an  otherwise  doubtful 
social  standing. 

If,  however,  the  pronunciation  fa- 
vored by  literature  has  met  with  re- 
verse in  the  case  of  wind  and  wound,  it 
has  scored  a  distinct  triumph  in  gold. 
This  in  poetry  always  rymes  with  such 
words  as  old,  fold,  behold.  So  it  does 
now  in  conversation.  But  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth,  the  fash- 
ionable and,  withal,  the  more  frequent 
pronunciation  was  goold.  It  was  a  prac- 
tice which  brought  grief  to  the  heart  of 
Walker.  He  looked  upon  it  as  a  disgrace 
to  the  language  that  indolence  and  vul- 
garity had  thus  been  enabled  to  corrupt 
it  into  the  sound  it  then  had.     Still  he 

112 


PRONUNCIATION 

deemed  it  too  firmly  intrenched  ever  to 
disappear.  Forecasts  of  this  sort  are  a 
mere  waste  of  breath.  No  one  can  pre- 
dict, with  any  approach  to  certainty  of 
fulfilment,  how  long  a  particular  pro- 
nunciation of  a  particular  word  is  likely 
to  last.  If  from  any  cause  it  comes  to 
offend  the  orthoepic  sense  of  large  num- 
bers, it  is  destined  to  go,  even  though 
literature  and  fashion  have  combined  to 
uphold  its  authority.  In  the  tragedy  of 
'Julius  Caesar'  Cassius  is  represented  as 
saying : 

"  Now  is  it  Rome  indeed  and  room  enough, 
When  there  is  in  it  but  one  only  man." 

Shakespeare's  play  upon  the  word  is 
evidence  that  in  his  age  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  city's  name  was,  at  least  at 
times,  that  denoted  by  the  noun  with 
which  it  is  here  joined  in  the  quotation, 
8  113 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

and  not  as  now  by  that  of  the  verb 
roam.  There  is  testimony  from  other 
quarters  that  such  was  the  practice  gen- 
erally. The  rymes  of  poets,  the  direct 
statements  found  in  text-books,  show 
that  the  pronunciation  indicated  in  the 
lines  just  given  was  the  one  prevailing 
during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries.  At  the  end  of  the  latter 
period.  Walker  declared  that  the  o 
of  Rome  seemed  irrecoverably  fixed  in 
the  sound  heard  in  move.  He  did  not 
speak  of  it  with  disapproval.  No  special 
clamor,  indeed,  seems  ever  to  have  been 
raised  against  the  pronunciation.  Yet 
by  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, if  not  earlier,  it  had  disappeared. 
There  was  nothing  peculiar  in  the 
state  of  mind  exhibited  by  Swift  about 
wind  or  by  Walker  about  gold.  It  is 
what  we  all  display,  with  more  or  less 
114 


PRONUNCIATION 

reason,  when  we  hear  a  pronunciation 
which  is  offensive  to  us.  To  him  who 
has  been  brought  up  to  sound  a  vowel 
in  a  particular  way,  any  other  way  is 
pretty  sure  to  seem  either  the  mark  of 
absurd  affectation  or  intolerable  vulgar- 
ity. These  are  the  terms  which  we  ap- 
ply to  pronunciations  which  vary  from 
those  prevailing  in  the  charmed  circle  to 
which  we,  of  course,  belong.  When  we 
hear  men  indulging  in  such,  we  are  led 
to  look  with  suspicion  upon  any  preten- 
sions they  make  to  the  possession  of  that 
refinement  and  culture  which  character- 
ize us.  Examples  can  be  found  on  every 
side;  but  in  order  not  to  be  invidious, 
let  us  go  back  a  century  or  so.  Lord 
Chesterfield,  in  writing  to  his  son,  point- 
ed out  one  of  the  means  by  which  the 
vulgarity  of  a  man,  no  matter  what  his 
position,  could  be  detected.  It  was  by 
"5 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

his  pronunciation.  In  tliat  he  bore  upon 
him  the  marks  of  the  beast.  The  vulgar 
man  would  say,  for  illustration,  going 
to-wards  such  and  such  a  place,  instead 
of  towards}  It  is  not  perfectly  clear 
what  pronunciation  it  was  that  Chester- 
field approved;  but  it  seems  probable 
that  he  objected  to  putting  the  stress 
upon  the  final  syllable.  This,  it  may  be 
remarked  in  passing,  was  the  one  au- 
thorized a  few  years  after  by  Dr.  John- 
son in  his  dictionary.  Towards,  indeed, 
during  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, seems  to  have  been  the  cause 
of  much  orthoepic  contention.  Some 
placed  the  accent  upon  the  first  syllable ; 
some  upon  the  last;  some  crushed  the 
two  syllables  into  one. 

Another    of    Chesterfield's    tests    of 
vulgarity  he  found  in  the  word  oblige. 

'  Letter  of  September  27,  1749. 
116 


PRONUNCIATION 

Specially  objectionable  was  the  sound 
of  its  i  as  e,  which,  in  the  illustration 
he  gave  of  it,  he  represented  by  ei. 
The  vulgar  man,  he  tells  us,  "is  obleiged, 
not  obliged,  to  you."  The  despised 
pronunciation  was  one  which  had  once 
been  heard  regularly.  The  stock  quo- 
tation, illustrating  the  practice,  is  con- 
tained in  the  couplet  forming  a  part  of 
Pope's  famous  attack  upon  Addison: 

"  Dreading  even  fools,  by  flatterers  besieg'd, 
And  so  obliging  that  he  ne'er  oblig'd." 

But  in  1749,  the  year  in  which  Chester- 
field was  writing,  this  more  ancient  way 
of  pronouncing  the  word  was  beginning 
to  be  looked  upon  by  some  with  much 
disfavor.  Among  these  the  noble  lord 
was  manifestly  included.  During  the 
latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
more  difference  prevailed,  perhaps,  in 
117 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

regard  to  this  word  than  about  towards. 
Some  pronounced  it  the  one  way,  some 
the  other;  there  were  a  few  who  author- 
ized both.  The  original  pronunciation 
held  its  ground  for  a  long  while.  In 
1 784  Nares  gave  a  list  of  words  in  which, 
according  to  him,  "i  had  the  sound  of 
long  c."  Among  them  this  particular 
one  was  included.  "Oblige  still,  I  think, 
retains  it,"  he  said,  hesitatingly,  "not- 
withstanding the  proscription  of  that 
pronunciation  by  the  late  Lord  Chester- 
field." Even  Walker,  opposed  to  it  on 
what  he  called  principle,  put  it  down  in 
his  dictionary  as  an  allowable  usage. 
But  the  feeling  had  then  been  for  a  long 
while  gradually  growing,  that  though 
this  pronunciation  might  not  be  improp- 
er, it  was  distinctly  old-fashioned.  As 
soon  as  that  attitude  towards  it  became 
wide-spread,  its  entire  disappearance  was 
118 


PRONUNCIATION 

only  a  question  of  time.  George  IV., 
when  Prince  of  Wales,  used  to  relate, 
with  a  good  deal  of  glee,  the  grave 
rebuke  administered  to  him  by  John 
Kemble  for  giving  to  the  i  of  this  word 
the  objectionable  sound.  "It  would  be- 
come your  royal  mouth  much  better," 
said  the  stately  actor,  "to  pronounce 
the  word  oblige,  and  not  oblFege." 

The  fundamental  principle,  indeed, 
upon  which  we  base  our  orthoepical 
criticisms  is  that  any  pronunciation  we 
do  not  ourselves  employ,  or  at  least  tol- 
erate, is  essentially  wrong.  Naturally, 
we  reprobate  those  coming  into  use  to 
which  we  are  not  accustomed,  as  also 
those  going  out  of  it,  which,  in  spite  of 
our  disapproval,  still  show  a  lingering 
life.  This  feeling,  so  generally  preva- 
lent among  cultivated  speakers,  may 
not  indicate  much  knowledge  of  the  facts 
119 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

on  their  part,  or  much  appreciation  of 
the  situation;  but,  nevertheless,  it  is  far 
from  being  an  unmixed  evil.  In  spite 
of  the  ignorant  pretentiousness  with 
which  it  is  often  accompanied,  it  may  be 
deemed,  in  truth,  a  positive  benefit. 
Changes  must  inevitably  take  place  in 
pronunciation.  In  consequence,  how- 
ever, of  the  disfavor  and  opposition  they 
meet,  they  take  place  slowly.  This  is 
something  in  itself  desirable.  Further- 
more, as  a  result  of  the  dislike,  reason- 
able or  unreasonable,  which  large  num- 
bers are  sure  to  manifest  for  a  new 
pronunciation,  these  changes  are  not 
apt  to  go  very  far.  Some  of  them  are, 
of  course,  certain  to  override  the  preju- 
dices of  the  hostile  and  establish  them- 
selves in  general  usage.  The  caprice  of 
fashion  plays,  as  we  have  seen,  no  small 
part  in  determining  the  status  of  a  lim- 

I20 


PRONUNCIATION 

ited  number.  But  in  addition  there  are 
certain  influences  always  at  work  which 
tend  to  produce  diversity.  Two  of 
them  require  special  consideration,  both 
for  what  they  have  done  and  are  still 
doing  in  the  way  of  bringing  about 
change.  They  are  important  because 
they  act  not  so  much  upon  individual 
words  as  upon  whole  classes.  They  are, 
further,  operating  at  all  times  and  in  all 
places. 

The  first  concerns  the  shifting  of  the 
accent.  With  us  a  general  disposition 
exists — subject  to  numerous  exceptions 
— to  place  it  as  far  from  the  end  as  pos- 
sible. The  practice  is  occasionally  car- 
ried to  such  an  extreme  that  it  almost  re- 
quires a  training  in  vocal  gymnastics  to 
utter  the  word  without  giving  the  im- 
pression that  part  of  it  has  been  swal- 
lowed by  the  speaker.     Excesses  of  this 

121 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

sort  are  apt,  in  the  long  run,  to  cure 
themselves;  for  pronunciation,  like  ev- 
erything else,  tends  to  follow  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  When  the  accent  is 
thrown  back  to  the  fourth  syllable  from 
the  end,  with  no  secondary  accent  to  aid 
utterance — as,  for  instance,  in  the  case 
of  indisputable  and  inexplicable — we  may 
be  confident  that  men  of  independence 
who  find  the  word  difficult  to  pro- 
nounce will  take  it  upon  them  to  pro- 
nounce it  to  suit  themselves.  It  is  then 
merely  a  matter  of  chance  whether  the 
method  they  have  chosen  to  adopt  has 
the  fortune  to  be  sanctioned  by  some 
one  of  the  numerous  dictionaries.  In 
the  case  of  the  two  words  just  cited,  in- 
disputable has,  if  anything,  the  greater 
weight  of  published  authority  in  favor 
of  placing  the  accent  on  the  third  sylla- 
ble; while  in  the  case  of  the  more  dif- 


PRONUNCIATION 

ficult  word,  inexplicable,  there  is  no 
orthoepic  authority  at  all  for  such  a 
course  outside  of  the  practice  of  indi- 
viduals. 

In  words  of  four  syllables  the  conflict 
has  usually  been  on  the  lines  just  indi- 
cated. Shall  the  stress  rest  upon  the 
second  syllable?  Or  upon  the  first,  with 
generally,  though  not  invariably,  a  sec- 
ondary stress  upon  the  third,  or  the  re- 
verse? Advertisement  is  a  good  illustra- 
tion. The  place  of  the  accent  has  been 
in  the  instance  of  this  word  a  fruitful 
source  of  controversy  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  at  least,  and  is  likely  so  to 
remain.  On  the  other  hand,  detestable, 
which  Shakespeare  invariably  stressed 
upon  the  first  syllable,  has  now  the  stress 
upon  the  second.  At  the  present  day 
differences  upon  the  points  just  indi- 
cated involve  about  fifty  words.  If  we 
123 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

should  go  back  to  the  eighteenth  century 
the  Hst  would  have  to  be  considerably- 
enlarged.  We  may  select  two  of  them 
as  illustrative  of  the  variation  of  view 
which  has  prevailed  at  different  times 
and  with  different  orthoepists.  In  the 
case  of  one  of  these  uniformity  has  now 
come  to  prevail;  in  that  of  the  other 
there  still  remains  diversity.  Academy 
had  once  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable. 
For  a  long  period  this  usage  continued 
to  exist.  By  the  middle,  at  least,  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  disposition  to 
give  the  word  its  present  pronunciation 
began  to  manifest  itself — "Anciently 
and  properly,"  remarked  Dr.  Johnson, 
"with  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable." 
He  cited  as  an  example  the  line  from 
'Love's  Labor's  Lost,' 

"  Our  court  shall  be  a  little  academy," 
124 


PRONUNCIATION 

where,  however,  the  word  in  the  original 
is  academe.^  But  he  added  the  observa- 
tion that  the  accent  was,  in  his  time,  fre- 
quently heard  upon  the  second  syllable. 
His  implied  condemnation  of  the  prac- 
tice did  not  arrest  the  progress  of  the 
new  pronunciation.  By  the  end  of  the 
century  it  had  fully  established  itself, 
and  in  the  century  which  followed  it  be- 
came, what  it  is  now,  the  exclusive 
usage. 

The  other  word  is  corollary.  Here 
Johnson  placed,  without  comment,  the 
accent  on  the  first  syllable,  as  if  there 
were  no  question  whatever  about  the 
practice.  Yet  his  predecessor,  Bailey, 
had  put  it  upon  the  second.  Johnson 
cited  again  from  Shakespeare  an  illus- 
tration, which  exemplified  one  of  the 
meanings  of  the  word  and  also  its  pro- 

'  Achademe  (folio  of  1623),  act  i.,  scene  i. 
125 


THH    STANDARD    OF 

nunciation.  It  was  the  passage  in  'The 
Tempest '  where  Prospero  gives  to  Ariel 
the  following  command: 

"  Bring  a  corollary, 
Rather  than  want  a  spirit."* 

From  the  great  lexicographer's  day  to 
our  own  orthoepists  have  been  divided 
in  their  treatment  of  this  word.  The 
weight  of  numbers,  both  in  England  and 
America,  is  distinctly  in  favor  of  the 
pronunciation  he  sanctioned.  Most  of 
the  compilers  of  dictionaries  have  not 
even  recognized  the  existence  of  any  ac- 
centuation besides  the  one  adopted  by 
him,  though  there  could  hardly  have 
been  a  time  in  which  the  other  was  not 
somewhere  in  good  use.  The  orthoe- 
pists who  have  placed  the  accent  on 
the  second  syllable  have  been,  however, 
'  Act  iv.,  scene  i. 
126 


PRONUNCIATION 

more  considerate.  They  give  Johnson's 
pronunciation  as  an  alternative.  State- 
ments not  very  different  may  be  made 
of  a  number  of  words  in  this  same  class. 
If,  further,  we  turn  our  attention  to 
words  of  more  than  four  syllables,  we 
shall  find  essentially  the  same  agencies 
at  work  to  produce  diversity. 

It  is  in  the  case  of  words  of  three  syl- 
lables, however,  that  the  contest  has  as- 
sumed special  bitterness.  In  these  the 
question  at  issue  is  whether  the  accent 
should  rest  upon  the  penultimate  sylla- 
ble or  the  antepenultimate.  The  peace 
of  families  has  been  disturbed,  and 
neighbor  has  risen  up  against  neighbor, 
in  consequence  of  the  difference  of  views 
held  as  to  the  proper  pronunciation 
of  such  words  as  aspirant,  contemplate, 
demonstrate,  extirpate,  inundate,  plethoric, 
and  others  too  numerous  to  mention. 
127 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Upon  them  the  stress  swings  backward 
and  forward,  from  penult  to  antepenult, 
and  the  reverse,  according  to  difference 
of  time  or  place  or  person.  In  every 
generation  the  controversy  crops  up. 
Disagreement  existed  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  as  it  did  in  the  nineteenth ;  it  is 
likely  to  exist  in  the  twenty-fifth.  Men 
will  continue  to  show  by  irrefragable 
proofs,  as  they  have  heretofore  shown, 
just  where  the  accent  ought  to  lie  in  all 
such  words.  They  will  be  duly  shocked 
in  the  future,  as  they  have  been  in  the 
past,  by  the  imbecility  which  fails  to 
recognize  the  justice  of  their  contention 
or  the  perversity  which  refuses  to  con- 
form to  the  practice  they  enjoin.  In  the 
Elizabethan  period  Shakespeare  said, 
indifferently,  con'fiscaie  or  conflsc'ate, 
dem'onstrate  or  demon' strata,  but  con' tem- 
plate alone.  In  the  nineteenth  century 
128 


PRONUNCIATION 

Rogers  was  made  indignant  by  a  usage 
corresponding  to  the  first  of  the  two 
practices  here  indicated.  "The  now 
fashionable  pronunciation  of  several 
words,"  the  old  poet  complained,  "is  to 
me  at  least  offensive.  Con' template  is  bad 
enough,  but  haVcony  makes  me  sick." 
At  the  present  time  it  would  produce  a 
similar  nauseating  effect  upon  many  to 
hear  the  accent  fall  upon  the  second 
syllable  of  this  last  word,  as  was  once 
the  usual  practice. 

It  is  only  a  few  of  these  words  which 
have  excited  much  feeling,  but  the  small- 
ness  of  the  number  has  been  compen- 
sated by  the  acrimony  displayed.  The 
principal  reason  for  this  condition  of 
things  it  is  not  difficult  to  discover.  It 
is  the  ever-recurring  contest  between 
Teutonic  accentuation  and  classical 
quantity.  In  any  given  period  the  par- 
9  129 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

ticular  pronunciations  in  vogue  represent 
a  compromise  temporarily  patched  up 
in  the  course  of  the  irrepressible  conflict 
which  goes  on  between  these  two.  Cer- 
tain words  are  unreservedly  relinquished 
for  a  time  to  one  party;  certain  to  the 
other ;  a  few  are  left  to  be  struggled  over. 
Those  about  which  controversy  contin- 
ues to  rage  have  almost  invariably  come 
from  the  Latin  or  the  Greek.  Their  intro- 
duction into  the  language  is  due  in  the 
first  instance  to  scholars.  Coming  in  un- 
der such  auspices,  it  is  natural  that  where 
the  penult  is  long  in  the  original  tongue, 
it  should  receive  the  accent  in  English. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  this  is  invariably 
the  case  at  the  outset.  If,  further,  the 
employment  of  the  word  is  limited  main- 
ly to  the  speech  of  the  highly  educated, 
it  is  reasonably  certain  to  retain  the  pro- 
nunciation it  had  on  its  first  entrance 
130 


PRONUNCIATION 

into  the  tongue.  But  if  it  once  come 
into  extensive  use,  the  influences  which 
affect  the  general  practice  soon  begin 
to  operate.  The  tendency  speedily  man- 
ifests itself  to  disregard  the  classical 
quantity.  Of  that  the  vast  majority  of 
those  who  employ  the  word  know  noth- 
ing ;  for  it  many  of  those  who  know  care 
nothing.  Consequently,  the  accent  is 
thrown  back  by  the  members  of  these 
two  classes  from  the  penult  to  the  ante- 
penult. Between  the  scholarly  usage 
remaining  faithful  to  the  original  quan- 
tity and  the  popular  usage,  which  aims 
to  conform  the  pronunciation  to  Eng- 
lish analogies,  a  conflict  inevitably 
arises. 

Furthermore,  the  agreement  reached 

in  any  particular  case  has  no  assurance 

of  permanence,  for  it  is  based  upon  no 

principle.     It  is  nothing  more  than  a 

131 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

convention.  In  one  instance  men  pro- 
nounce a  word  so  as  to  give  recognition 
to  the  Latin  quantity;  in  another  in- 
stance of  a  precisely  similar  character 
they  disregard  it  and  follow  English 
analogy.  Accordingly,  no  settlement  is 
lasting.  It  is  liable  at  any  moment  to 
be  upset  by  innovation  or  caprice  or  the 
authority  of  great  example.  The  war 
is  then  at  once  renewed.  The  contest  is 
far  from  being  unequal.  The  classical 
guild  has  always  been,  as  indeed  it  ought 
to  be,  a  powerful  one.  However  much 
shorn  of  its  strength  in  these  later 
times,  it  can  still  endure,  in  pugiHstic 
phrase,  an  immense  amount  of  punish- 
ment without  showing  any  signs  of  giv- 
ing in.  Its  members,  as  is  natural,  con- 
tend steadily  for  the  pronunciation 
which  pays  respect  to  the  quantity  of 
the  syllables  as  found  in  the  original. 
132 


PRONUNCIATION 

They  are  very  apt  to  impart  a  distinct 
tone  of  earnestness  to  the  expression  of 
their  convictions  by  applying  to  those 
following  the  contrary  practice  certain 
opprobrious  epithets  of  which  "illiter- 
ate" is  the  least  offensive.  By  many  of 
them  the  classical  quantity  is  regarded 
as  something  altogether  too  sacred  to 
be  trifled  with.  They  write  letters  to 
the  press  deploring  the  lamentable  ten- 
dency which  has  always  existed,  and 
still  exists,  to  throw  back  the  accent 
from  the  end  of  the  word.  They  seem 
to  be  unaware  of  the  fact  that  this  is 
about  the  same  as  deploring  that  the 
English  language  is  the  English  lan- 
guage. 

But  there  is  no  doubt  that  their  con- 
tention always  has  had,  and  is  always 
likely  to  have,  a  good  deal  of  influence 
upon    usage.     Furthermore,    they    not 
^33 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

only  recommend  by  their  practice  the 
pronunciations  they  approve ;  they  have 
to  no  small  extent  the  means  of  having 
their  preferences  respected.  It  is  to  the 
men  who  have  received  classical  train- 
ing that  the  compilation  of  dictionaries 
is  mainly  committed.  Even  those  of 
them  who  are  abstractly  disposed  to  pay 
little  heed  to  the  original  quantity  are, 
nevertheless,  affected  by  the  education 
they  have  had.  It  has  given  them  the 
chance  to  acquire  prejudices  of  the  kind 
just  indicated.  Those  of  the  number 
who  have  improved  fully  the  opportuni- 
ties thus  furnished  frequently  manifest 
a  disposition  in  the  orthoepy  they  sanc- 
tion in  these  dictionaries  to  go  back  on 
the  least  pretext  to  the  pronunciations 
which  correspond  to  the  classical  quan- 
tity. Even  such  of  them  as  profess  in- 
difference in  the  matter  are  slow  to  rec- 
134 


PRONUNCIATION 

ognize  changes  which  have  taken  place 
in  favor  of  the  EngHsh  accentuation. 
Inundate  is  a  case  in  point.  For  very 
many  years  past  the  accent  has  been 
placed  by  a  large  body  of  cultivated 
men  upon  the  first  syllable.  Yet  the 
majority  of  modern  dictionaries  will  be 
searched  in  vain  for  any  authorization  of 
this  usage,  though  heard  constantly.  In 
two  great  American  ones — the  Interna- 
tional and  the  Standard  —  not  even  is 
its  existence  recognized.  The  same 
statement  can  be  made  of  two  English 
ones  —  the  Encyclopaedic  and  Stor 
month's.  The  only  three  leading  works 
of  this  character  which  authorize  it  are 
the  Century,  the  Imperial,  and  the  New 
Historical  English  Dictionary. 

This  deference  to  classical  quantity 
makes  often  a  singular  exhibition  of  it- 
self.    We  are  told  in  Mr.  Trevelyan's 

135 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

fascinating  biography  that  Macaulay,  in 
correcting  errors,  real  or  assumed,  com- 
mitted by  his  nephews  and  nieces,  cen- 
sured, above  all,  any  disposition  on  their 
part  to  pronounce  the  penult  of  met- 
amorphosis short.  This  has  more  than 
the  interest  of  an  example  of  the  ques- 
tion under  discussion.  It  is  like  a  re- 
version to  the  old  days,  when  every  man 
was  his  own  orthoepist.  It  illustrates 
peculiarly  the  independence  often  shown 
by  Englishmen  of  all  generally  recognized 
authority  in  the  matter  of  pronunciation, 
and  their  confidence  in  the  correctness  of 
their  practice,  for  the  reason,  amply  suffi- 
cient to  them,  that  it  is  their  practice. 
The  American  usually  goes  to  his  favor- 
ite dictionary,  and  meekly  accepts,  with- 
out even  thinking  of  protest,  what  the 
man  he  has  adopted  as  his  guide  chooses 
to  tell  him.  In  this  particular  case  it  is 
136 


PRONUNCIATION 

first  to  be  stated  that  most  of  the  words 
ending  in  -osis  are  purely  technical. 
Used  only  by  special  students,  they  nat- 
urally retain  the  accentuation  which  is 
based  upon  the  quantity  of  the  prim- 
itive. Two  of  this  class,  however — 
metamorphosis  and  apotheosis  —  have 
escaped  into  the  language  of  general 
literature.  In  the  instance  of  the  for- 
mer, the  orthoepists  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  including  the  principal  lexicog- 
raphers— Bailey,  Dr.  Johnson,  Sheridan, 
and  Walker — agreed  in  placing  the  ac- 
cent on  the  antepenult.  So  also  have 
done  the  orthoepists  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Not  one  of  them,  so  far  as  I 
can  discover,  recognizes  even  the  ex- 
istence of  the  pronunciation  insisted 
upon  by  Macaulay  as  the  only  one 
which  could  properly  be  used. 

Apotheosis  has  had  a  career  somewhat 
137 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

more  checkered;  still  its  history  resem- 
bles, in  general,  that  of  metamorphosis. 
In  its  case  also  nearly  all  the  orthoepists 
of  the  eighteenth  century  put  the  accent 
upon  the  antepenult.  There  were  two 
or  three  exceptions;  but  none  of  these 
were  men  who  had  a  great  following. 
The  same  state  of  things  continued 
largely  during  most  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  weight  of  authority  still 
remained  distinctly  in  favor  of  the 
antepenultimate  accent.  But  as  we  ap- 
proach nearer  our  own  time  the  attitude 
exhibited  towards  the  pronunciation  of 
the  word  has  undergone  an  apparent 
change.  There  seems  to  have  arisen  a 
disposition  to  lay  the  stress  upon  the 
penult.  "Seems  to  have  arisen"  is  the 
language  used.  When  any  one  tells  us 
that  most  persons  pronounce  a  word  so 
and  so,  it  is  always  a  pertinent  inquiry 
138 


PRONUNCIATION 

to  make,  how  he  came  to  know  what 
most  persons  do.  Especially  is  the  ques- 
tion necessary  when  the  pronunciation 
which  is  represented  as  meeting  with 
the  approbation  of  the  great  majority  is 
one  not  sanctioned  by  the  majority  of 
orthoepists.  How  extensive,  according- 
ly, is  the  observation  upon  which  the 
assertion  is  based  ?  How  many  persons 
have  been  consulted?  It  will  ordina- 
rily be  found  that  the  informant  has 
endowed  his  own  practice  and  that  of 
his  immediate  circle  with  the  attribute 
of  generality,  if  not  of  universality. 
Still,  there  is  not  much  question  that  the 
accentuation  of  the  penult  of  apotheosis 
has  made  great  headway  of  late  years. 
It  is  authorized  by  several  modern  dic- 
tionaries. It  is  not  unlikely  that  it  may 
come  to  prevail  generally;  not  impossi- 
ble that  it  may  come  to  prevail  exclu- 
139 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

sively.  The  men  by  whom  the  word  is 
almost  entirely  used  are  specially  sus- 
ceptible to  classical  influences.  In  the 
light  of  the  facts  which  have  just  been 
given  there  is  even  hope  that  Macau- 
lay's  accentuation  of  metamorphosis, 
scouted  from  the  beginning  as  it  has 
been  by  orthoepists,  may  yet  find  favor. 
The  feeling  exhibited  about  the  pro- 
nunciation of  such  words  is  best  illus- 
trated by  Landor  in  one  of  his  'Imagi- 
nary Conversations.'  It  is  that  which 
is  set  forth  as  having  taken  place  be- 
tween Dr.  Johnson  and  Home  Tooke. 
The  latter  is  represented  as  saying  that 
in  some  instances  we  have  lost  the  right 
accent.  "In  my  youth,"  he  continues, 
"he  would  have  been  ridiculed  who 
placed  it  upon  the  first  syllable  of 
confiscated,  contemplative,  conventicle,  at 
which  the  ear  revolts:  in  many  other 
140 


PRONUNCIATION 

compounds  we  thrust  it  back  with  equal 
precipitancy  and  rudeness.  We  have 
sinned,  and  are  sinning,  against  our 
fathers  and  mothers.  We  shall '  re'pent ' 
and  're'form'  and  *  re'monstrate ' ;  and 
be  're'jected'  at  last."  This  extract 
fully  and  fairly  presents  the  attitude 
taken  by  those  who  may  be  called  the 
classicists.  Here  we  see  the  belief  in 
full  flower,  that  there  is  a  right  accent 
belonging  to  derived  English  words,  and 
this  accent  is  based  upon  respect  for  the 
Latin  quantity.  Such  a  belief  implies 
ignorance  of  the  influences  which  have 
affected  and  still  affect  pronunciation 
in  our  tongue.  To  its  supporters  that 
seems  all  the  more  reason  for  holding 
it  firmly  and  expressing  it  vigorously. 
"I  have  lately  heard  ill'tistrate,"  Home 
Tooke  is  further  reported  as  remarking 
in  this  imaginary  conversation.  "We 
141 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

shall   presently    come    to    imper'cepti- 
hlcr 

Landor  was  unaware  that  his  antici- 
pated impcr'ccpiihle  was  opposed  to  the 
analogy  of  the  language,  and  that  in 
consequence  it  belonged  to  a  kind  of 
pronunciation  which  the  users  of  speech 
were  disposed  to  turn  away  from  instead 
of  turning  to.  The  exact  reverse  was 
true  in  the  case  of  the  other  word.  Had 
he  himself  lived  two  or  three  years 
longer  than  he  actually  did,  he  could 
have  found  illustrate  the  only  pronun- 
ciation authorized  by  the  well-known 
philologist,  Robert  Gordon  Latham,  in 
that  volume  of  his  revision  of  Dr.  John- 
son's dictionary  which  came  out  in  1866. 
For  some  unexplained  reason,  it  may 
here  be  remarked,  this  last-mentioned 
pronunciation  has  been  specially  provo- 
cative of  bad  language  on  the  part  of 
142 


PRONUNCIATION 

those  objecting  to  its  use.  Against  it  the 
fiercest  antagonism  has  been  displayed. 
It  has  been  stigmatized  as  abominable 
and  hideous.  The  only  thing  to  draw 
upon  it  these  and  other  abusive  epithets 
appears  to  be  its  modernism.  Landor 
had  doubtless  heard  the  word  so  pro- 
nounced; but  it  is  fairly  safe  to  say 
that  Home  Tooke  never  had. 

The  all-comprehensive  ignorance,  in- 
deed, which  was  usually  exhibited  by 
Landor,  of  the  history  of  the  speech, 
of  which  he  was  wont  to  discourse 
dogmatically,  made  a  notable  mani- 
festation of  itself  in  the  case  of  the 
word  conventicle  mentioned  in  the  quo- 
tation cited  above.  The  pronunciation 
to  which  he  objected  was  not  an  inno- 
vation but  a  survival.  Undoubtedly, 
the  accent  once  rested  upon  the  first 
syllable,  with  a  secondary  accent  upon 
143 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  third.  So  Shakespeare  gave  it  in 
the  single  instance  in  which  he  used 
the  word.*  So  it  is  found  in  Dryden. 
In  his  'Hind  and  Panther,'  that  poet 
speaks  of  the  class  of  religious  fanatics, 

"  Who,  far    from   steeples    and    their  sacred 
sound, 
In  fields  their  sullen  conventicles  found."  ^ 

This  pronunciation,  though  unrecog- 
nized by  Dr.  Johnson,  lasted  certainly 
into  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century;  from  Landor's  observation 
it  seems  to  have  been  still  occasionally 
heard  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth. 
In  the  epilogue  to  Colman's  'Jealous 
Wife,'  which  was  brought  out  in  1761, 
we  find  the  ryme  still  preserving  the 
older  accentuation  in  the  following  lines : 

'  2  Henry  VI.,  iii.,  i,  166. 
'Part  I,  1.  312. 

144 


PRONUNCIATION 

"  The  dame,  of  manner  various,  temper  fickle. 
Now  all  for  pleasure,  now  the  conventicle." 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  in  our 
tongue  victory  in  the  case  of  trisylla- 
bles is  likely  to  rest  with  such  as  place 
the  accent  upon  the  third  syllable  from 
the  end.  Those  who  maintain  the  cause 
of  the  penultimate  have  fought  man- 
fully, indignantly,  reproachfully  against 
the  encroachments  of  the  antepenulti- 
mate party.  But  theirs  has  been  usual- 
ly a  losing  battle.  Their  lack  of  success 
is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  they  are 
themselves  compelled  to  acquiesce  in 
many  violations  of  the  pronunciation 
based  upon  derivation  which,  in  dis- 
puted cases,  they  profess  to  look  upon 
as  essential.  The  men  most  tenacious 
of  respect  for  classical  quantity  will  not 
venture  to  say,  for  instance,  audi'tor, 
ora'tor,  sena'tor,  victo'ry,  though  logical- 
lo  145 


THE    STANDARD    OP 

ly  they  are  bound  so  to  do.  The  argu- 
ment from  consistency  carries,  there- 
fore, no  weight.  In  our  accentuation  of 
words  we  are  not  really  governed  by 
that  or  by  any  other  principle,  save  in 
the  most  general  way.  Our  ear  is  likely 
to  revolt  at  an  unaccustomed  pronuncia- 
tion on  no  other  ground  than  that  we  are 
not  accustomed  to  it;  just  as  on  the  same 
ground  our  eye  is  apt  to  revolt  at  a  spell- 
ing with  which  we  are  not  familiar.  To 
fancy  that  our  reason  has  anything  to  do 
with  our  feelings  in  either  case  is  to  be- 
tray our  lack  of  acquaintance  with  the 
subject  about  which  we  are  talking. 

This,  however,  is  a  view  which  to 
many  seems  incomprehensible.  They 
are  always  seeking  for  some  infallible 
rule  to  guide  their  practice.  If  you 
say  dcm'onstrate,  argue  those  who  ap- 
peal to  analogy,  why  do  you  not  say 
146 


PRONUNCIATION 

rem' onstratef  That  query  seems  to  be 
regarded  as  crushing.  Well,  the  latter 
word  will  not  have  its  back  broken  if 
people  should  choose  so  to  pronounce  it. 
Even  then  it  will  continue  to  exist  and 
flourish.  To  the  question  itself,  how- 
ever, there  is  but  one  answer.  The 
users  of  speech  do  not  say  rem'onstrate, 
for  the  reason,  satisfactory  to  them, 
that  they  have  never  had  any  disposi- 
tion to  do  so  in  the  past,  nor  have  they 
so  far  developed  any  such  desire  in  the 
present.  Analogy  affects  them  but 
slightly.  Our  whole  orthoepic  system 
is  full  of  inconsistencies  of  the  kind  sug- 
gested. I  once  heard  an  educated  man, 
a  scholar,  too,  on  certain  lines,  inveigh- 
ing with  great  bitterness  against  the 
accentuation  of  sojourn  on  the  last  syl- 
lable. He  seemed  to  think  that  such  a 
pronunciation  of  the  word  was  not  only 
147 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

scandalously  incorrect,  but  that  it 
threatened  somehow  the  purity  of  the 
speech.  His  anxiety  was  so  excessive 
that  it  led  to  the  natural  inquiry,  upon 
what  syllable  he  placed  the  accent  in 
the  case  of  the  word  adjourn,  corre- 
sponding both  in  spelling  and  deriva- 
tion to  sojourn;  and  if  he  put  it  upon  the 
last — which  he  doubtless  did — what  de- 
fence he  could  make  for  his  conduct. 
Pressing  engagements  compelled  him  to 
betake  himself  elsewhere  before  he  could 
formulate  the  satisfactory  answer  he 
possibly  had  in  mind. 

To  illustrate  the  trials  of  a  pronun- 
ciation striving  for  recognition,  let  us 
trace  the  fortunes  of  decorous.  Bailey, 
seemingly  the  first  lexicographer  to  give 
accentuation,  pronounced  it  dec'orous. 
But  when  Johnson  brought  out  his  dic- 
tionary he  placed  the  stress  upon  the 
148 


PRONUNCIATION 

second  syllable.  His  authority  was  so 
great  that  he  was  generally  followed  by 
those  orthoepists  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury who  gave  the  word  at  all.  Walker 
accepted  this  pronunciation  under  pro- 
test. "An  uneducated  English  speak- 
er," he  remarked,  "is  very  apt  to  pro- 
nounce the  word  with  the  accent  on  the 
first  syllable,  according  to  the  analogy 
of  his  own  language;  but  a  learned  ear 
would  be  as  much  shocked  at  such  a  de- 
parture from  classical  propriety  as  in 
the  words  sonorous  and  canorous."  But 
the  learned  ear  was  somewhat  distaste- 
ful to  the  lexicographer.  He  was  so 
restive  under  the  practice  of  imposing 
the  Latin  quantity  upon  the  English 
word  that  when  he  came  to  the  com- 
pound indecorous  he  broke  away  to 
some  extent  from  most  of  preceding 
authorities,  and  allowed  speakers  the 
149 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

choice  of  placing  the  stress  upon  either 
the  penult  or  the  antepenult.  Nor 
could  he  refrain  from  venting  his  wrath 
at  the  ordinary  accentuation.  He  re- 
garded it  as  a  satire  upon  the  good  taste 
and  sense  of  Englishmen.  "Dr.  Ash," 
he  added,  "is  the  only  one  who  places 
the  accent  upon  the  antepenultimate; 
but  what  is  his  single  authority,  though 
with  analogy  upon  his  side,  to  a  crowd 
of  coxcombs  vaporing  with  scraps  of 
Latin?" 

But  Walker  confined  his  revolt  to  the 
compound;  in  the  case  of  the  simple 
word  he  did  not  venture  to  act  accord- 
ing to  his  convictions.  Instead  he  de- 
ferred to  the  practice  of  polite  society. 
The  furthest  extent,  therefore,  to  which 
his  followers  could  go  was  to  assert  that 
it  was  indec' oroiis  to  accent  deco'rous 
upon  the  first  syllable.  It  was  not  till 
150 


PRONUNCIATION 

Webster  came  forward  that  the  older  ac- 
centuation was  reintroduced,  at  least  in 
a  dictionary  of  any  pretension.  In  his 
first  edition  of  1828  dcc'oroiis  appeared 
as  the  only  authorized  pronunciation. 
The  later  extensive  circulation  of  his 
work  caused  this  usage  to  spread  far  and 
wide  in  America.  It  must,  however, 
have  been  then  the  general  practice  to 
accent  it  thus  in  this  country,  at  least  so 
far  as  Webster  was  acquainted  with  it; 
for,  though  a  daring  defier  of  the  con- 
ventional in  orthography,  he  was  far 
from  desiring  to  combat  it  in  orthoepy. 
In  England,  Knowles,  in  1835,  gave  both 
pronunciations  of  the  word,  but  indi- 
cated a  preference  for  that  which  laid 
the  stress  on  the  antepenult.  The  same 
course  was  followed  in  1848  by  Boag, 
who  produced  a  dictionary  in  which  he 
professed  to  follow  Walker's  orthoepy 
151 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

with  improvements.  Such  also  was  the 
pronunciation  adopted  by  Craig,  whose 
work  appeared  in  1849,  and  by  Thomas 
Wright  in  his,  which  followed  in  1855. 
But  for  a  long  time  the  word  received  in 
the  English  dictionaries  most  generally 
followed  the  accent  only  on  the  penult. 
Of  late  the  antepenultimate  pronuncia- 
tion is  beginning  to  be  sanctioned  by 
some  of  the  highest  authorities.  This 
probably  means  its  eventual  adoption 
by  everybody. 

Still,  though  the  penultimate  party 
is  pretty  certain  to  be  worsted  in  a  long- 
continued  battle,  it  can  inscribe  upon 
its  banners  some  notable  triumphs. 
This  has  been  due,  in  part,  to  the  ex- 
cesses of  its  opponents.  Walker  was  so 
much  influenced  by  his  principle  of 
analogy  that  he  carried  the  accent  so  far 
from  the  end  upon  a  number  of  words 
152 


PRONUNCIATION 

that  they  became  somewhat  difficult  to 
pronounce.  Ac'ceptable  may  stand  as  one 
illustration  out  of  several.  Accordingly, 
ease  of  utterance  came  to  the  aid  of  the 
advocates  of  the  penultimate  stress,  and 
that  too  in  cases  where  the  classical 
quantity  was  not  involved.  Schismatic , 
phlegmatic,  splenetic,  for  illustration,  had 
once  the  accent  regularly  upon  the 
first  syllable.  If  dictionaries  are  to  be 
deemed  authority,  the  prevailing  usage 
is  now  to  place  it  upon  the  second 
syllable,  especially  in  the  case  of  the 
first  two.  No  one  apparently  thinks 
any  longer  of  laying  the  stress  upon  the 
first  syllable  of  successor,  a  practice 
once  seemingly  much  more  common 
than  laying  it  on  the  second.  "  There  is 
little  doubt,"  said  Walker,  "that  the 
antepenultimate  accent  will  prevail." 
A  statement  not  essentially  different 
153 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

can  be  made  about  confessor.  In  the 
case  of  this  word  Bailey  placed  the  stress 
upon  the  second  syllable;  but  in  the 
large  majority  of  eighteenth  -  century 
dictionaries  it  fell  upon  the  first.  If  the 
poets  can  be  taken  to  represent  the 
usage  accurately,  this  seems  to  have 
been  both  the  earlier  and  the  regular 
pronunciation.  Walker  quoted  John 
Kemble  as  saying  that  the  word  was  im- 
properly accented  on  the  first  syllable; 
but  he  added,  "This  impropriety  is  now 
become  so  universal  that  no  one  who 
has  the  least  pretence  to  politeness  dares 
to  pronounce  it  otherwise."  With  hori- 
zon the  stress  once  fell  upon  the  ante- 
penult. Johnson  rebuked  Shakespeare 
for  having  falsely  pronounced  it  that 
way.  Yet  Walker,  writing  towards  the 
end  of  the  same  century,  declared  that 
"this  word,  till  of  late  years,  was  uni- 
154 


PRONUNCIATION 

versally  pronounced  in  prose  with  the 
accent  on  the  first  syllable."  He  clearly 
thought  that  this  was  the  right  course, 
at  least  theoretically.  He  seemed  to 
attribute  the  disrepute  into  which  the 
analogical  pronunciation  had  fallen  to 
the  influence  of  the  poets;  and  it  is  cer- 
tain that  with  Milton,  Cowley,  and  Dry- 
den  the  word  had  the  same  stress  which 
it  has  now. 

This  tendency  to  move  the  accent 
on  towards  the  end  gives  more  mani- 
fest exhibition  of  itself  in  words  of  two 
than  of  three  syllables.  We  can  see  it 
exemplified  now  in  the  case  of  sojourn, 
just  mentioned.  The  verse  of  poets,  like 
Milton,  shows  that  the  stress  once  rested 
regularly,  perhaps  invariably,  upon  its 
first  syllable.  Were  the  word  in  com- 
mon use,  such  a  pronunciation  would  by 
this  time  have  pretty  surely  come  to 
155 


THE   STANDARD    OF 

seem  old-fashioned.  So,  also,  if  Dr. 
Johnson's  accentuation  could  be  taken 
as  representing  the  universal  practice  of 
his  age,  we  should  be  compelled  to  be- 
lieve that  many  words  of  two  syllables 
which  once  had  the  accent  upon  the  first, 
have  now  come  to  assume  it  upon  the 
second.  In  the  former  way  were  pro- 
nounced by  him  carbine,  carmine,  cartel, 
finance,  gazette,  levant  as  a  noun,  petard, 
and  trepan.  It  is  evident,  however, 
from  various  sources  that  the  accentua- 
tion he  authorized  was  not  universally 
accepted;  and  in  these  instances  the 
other  method  of  pronunciation  which 
then  existed  is  the  one  which  has  de- 
scended to  us. 

More  striking  than  any  of  these  ex- 
amples is  July.     Every  student  of  our 
early  poetry,  especially  of  our  dramatic 
poetry,  becomes  aware  that  this  word 
156 


PRONUNCIATION 

was  usually,  if  not  invariably,  pro- 
nounced Ju'ly.  So  it  continued  to  be 
down  to  the  latter  part  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  and  to  some  extent 
later.  Bailey  and  Johnson  both  placed 
the  accent  upon  the  first  syllable.  In 
so  doing,  they  were  in  accord  with  the 
general  practice  of  the  orthoepists  of  the 
time.  Indeed,  the  only  early  authoriza- 
tion I  have  personally  chanced  to  meet 
of  the  present  pronunciation  is  in  the 
edition  of  Dyche  and  Pardon's  diction- 
ary,   which    came   out   in    1750.^     But 

*  The  English  dictionary  of  Thomas  Dyche, 
left  unfinished  by  him,  was  revised  and  com- 
pleted by  William  Pardon  after  Dyche's 
death.  The  first  part  of  it  appeared  in  April, 
1735.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  successful 
work.  The  only  edition  of  it  I  have  seen — 
that  of  1 750 — is  the  sixth.  It  is  probable  that 
its  accentuation  of  July  on  the  last  syllable  is 
found  in  the  original  edition  of  1735. 

157 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

though  then  to  some  extent  in  use,  it 
met  witli  little  favor.  "This,  we  con- 
fess," said  of  it  a  reviewer  in  1773,  "is  a 
common  way  of  pronouncing  the  word, 
but  surely  improper."* 

In  the  case  of  trisyllables,  too,  the  ac- 
cent has  in  several  instances  remained 
faithful  to  the  classical  quantity,  in 
spite  of  persistent  attacks  upon  it  from 
those  who  either  ignorantly  or  advisedly 
seek  to  establish  their  pronunciation 
according  to  English  analogy.  All  ef- 
forts, for  illustration,  to  have  the  stress 
fall  on  the  first  syllable  of  inquiry,  oppo- 
nent, museum — and  these  efforts  have 
been  frequent  and  long  continued — 
have  so  far  invariably  resulted  in  dis- 
aster. No  authority  of  repute  recog- 
nizes in'qiiiry,  op'ponent,  mu'seum,  and 
such    pronunciations    always    beget    a 

^Critical  Review,  vol.  xxxvi.,  p.  344. 
158 


PRONUNCIATION 

feeling  of  pity  or  pain  in  the  hearts  of 
those  who  deem  themselves  orthoepical- 
ly  pure.  Furthermore,  in  every  stream 
of  tendency  there  are  occasional  eddies. 
There  is  a  striking  example  of  a  pronun- 
ciation which  the  users  of  speech  have 
fixed  upon  in  defiance  of  all  authority. 
Most  persons  in  the  northern  United 
States  are  familiar  with  the  fragrant 
creeper  called  the  "trailing  arbutus." 
No  one  who  knows  the  plant  thinks — at 
least  no  one  used  to  think — of  pronounc- 
ing the  last  word  of  its  name  any  other 
way  than  arbu'tus.  Yet  in  the  Latin 
substantive  from  which  it  came  the 
quantity  of  the  penult  is  short.  Ac- 
cordingly, if  we  conform  to  the  pronun- 
ciation of  the  original,  we  should  be 
obliged  to  call  it  ar'butus.  The  word 
itself  did  not  appear  in  the  earliest  pro- 
nouncing dictionaries.  Its  place  was 
159 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

taken  by  arbutc,  with  the  accent  upon 
the  first  syllable.  But,  for  all  that,  it 
had  long  existed  in  the  language.  What 
few  notices  are  taken  of  its  pronuncia- 
tion indicate  that  the  practice  existed 
even  in  the  eighteenth  century  of  lay- 
ing the  stress  upon  the  second  syllable. 
Nares  mentioned  it  in  1784.  In  his 
work  on  orthoepy,  then  published,  he 
pointed  out  that  the  word  was  com- 
monly pronounced  arhu'tus,  "though," 
he  added,  "ar'butus  is  more  proper." 
This  popular  accentuation  has  usually 
been  somewhat  distressing  to  the  mod- 
em lexicographer.  It  flies  in  the  face 
of  both  English  analogy  and  classical 
quantity.  When  orthoepists  adopt  it, 
they  are  apt  to  do  so  with  apologies. 
Some  of  them  make  a  compromise  be- 
tween the  respect  due  to  popular  pro- 
nunciation and  to  the  Latin  quantity  by 
160 


PRONUNCIATION 

putting  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable 
and  making  the  n  of  the  second  long — a 
pronunciation  which  could  not  well  have 
existed  at  first  outside  of  dictionaries, 
if  even  now  it  exists  anywhere  else. 

Names  of  places  hardly  come  under 
consideration  in  a  discussion  of  this  nat- 
ure. In  such  words  the  local  pronun- 
ciation generally  remains  constant;  it  is 
regarded  as  authoritative,  and  outsiders 
are  expected  to  conform  to  it  as  soon  as 
they  have  learned  what  it  is.  For  in- 
stance, Queen  Victoria's  residence  at 
Balmoral  brought  that  name  prominent- 
ly before  the  public.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  some  who  had  never  heard  the 
word  pronounced  should  seek  to  make  it 
conform  to  English  analogy,  and  place 
the  accent  upon  the  first  syllable  instead 
of  the  second.  But  from  the  very  nat- 
ure of  things  this  could  not  prevail.  The 
II  i6i 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

one  instance  of  change  in  words  of  this 
class,  which  stands  out  with  exceptional 
prominence,  is  Niagara.  If  the  evidence 
of  poetry  be  regarded  as  conclusive,  the 
accent  during  the  eighteenth  century- 
rested  upon  the  penult.  The  quotation 
commonly  employed  to  illustrate  the 
practice  comes  from  'The  Traveller.' 
In  it  Goldsmith  pictures  the  distresses 
which  await  the  emigrants  to  Ameri- 
can shores.  Among  the  various  dreary 
scenes  in  which  it  will  be  their  lot  to 
find  themselves,  one  is  to  be 

"  Where   wild    Oswego   spreads   her   swamps 
around, 
And  Niagara  stuns  with  thundering  sound." 

This  accentuation  is  occasionally  found 
much  later.  To  The  Scenic  Annual  for 
1838  Campbell  contributed  a  poem  cele- 
brating the  beauties  of  Cora  Linn.  In 
162 


PRONUNCIATION 

it  occur  the  following  lines  about  this 
waterfall : 

"Dear  Linn!  let  loftier  falling  floods 
Have  prouder  names  than  thine; 
And  king  of  all,  enthroned  in  woods, 
Let  Niagara  shine." 

The  necessities  of  the  verse  may  have 
forced  Campbell  into  the  adoption  of 
this  accentuation,  or  the  pronunciation 
of  his  youth  may  have  clung  to  him ;  but 
he  did  not  escape  being  taken  severely 
to  task  by  the  reviewers  for  placing  the 
stress  where  he  did. 

Still,  after  all  that  has  been  said,  con- 
troversy about  the  place  of  the  accent  is 
limited  to  a  comparatively  small  num- 
ber of  words.  These  produce  more  im- 
pression upon  our  minds  than  they 
ought,  because  of  the  wrath  which  dif- 
ference of  opinion  about  them  excites  in 
the  most  amiable  natures.  The  truth  is 
163 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

tliat  any  one  who  makes  a  study  of  the 
pronunciation  authorized  by  the  various 
orthoepists  of  the  eighteenth  century 
will  be  struck  by  the  little  change  which 
has  taken  place,  on  the  whole,  in  this 
precise  particular.  If  he  should  con- 
sult one  work  only,  it  might,  indeed,  ap- 
pear somewhat  extensive ;  but  if  he  con- 
sults them  all,  he  is  reasonably  sure  to 
find  the  modern  accentuation  sanctioned 
by  some  of  them.  Of  two  or  more  ways 
of  laying  the  stress  which  once  prevail- 
ed, the  now  existing  one  not  infrequently 
remains  the  sole  survivor.  At  present 
we  all  say  com'promise.  There  was  a 
time  when  we  could  have  said  comprom'- 
ise,  and  have  cited  to  justify  us  the  au- 
thority of  the  dictionary  most  widely  in 
use.  So,  also,  we  should  have  found  it 
sanctioning  thea'tre,  and  inval'id  both  as 
a  noun  and  an  adjective.  Compared,  in- 
164 


PRONUNCIATION 

deed,  with  the  variations  found  in  the 
treatment  of  vowel  sounds  by  the  users 
of  speech,  changes  caused  by  difference 
of  accentuation  are  of  slight  account. 
Nor  is  this  agency  of  anything  like  the 
importance  of  the  second  one  which  re- 
mains to  be  considered.  This  is  the  dis- 
position to  make  the  pronunciation  con- 
form to  the  spelling.  English,  with  its 
lawless  orthography,  opens  a  wide  field 
for  the  operation  of  such  an  influence. 
It  is  necessarily  limited  in  its  range,  but 
in  the  range  it  has  it  works  unceasingly. 
The  disposition  has  been  exhibited  at 
times  from  the  earliest  period.  With 
the  spread  of  education  it  has  entered 
upon  a  fuller  and  more  vigorous  ac- 
tivity. 

The  reason  for  the  increase  in  this 
tendency  is  manifest.     In  early  times 
knowledge  of  the  speech  was  gained  al- 
165 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

most  exclusively  through  the  ear;  at 
present  it  is  learned  largely  through  the 
eye.  Men  now  make  their  first  ac- 
quaintance with  many  words  by  seeing 
them  upon  the  printed  page.  In  numer- 
ous instances,  after  having  seen  them 
there,  they  rarely  hear  them  spoken. 
Accordingly,  it  is  natural  that  they 
should  try  to  pronounce  them  as  near 
as  they  possibly  can  to  the  way  in 
which  they  are  spelled.  This  of  itself 
has  a  tendency  to  produce  variation. 
The  phonetic  sense  of  the  English-speak- 
ing race  has  been  rendered  so  defective 
by  the  confused  orthography  of  the 
tongue  that  to  different  men  the  same 
combination  of  letters  will  convey  differ- 
ent sounds.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing, 
in  consequence,  to  find  illiterate  spell- 
ing designated  as  phonetic  spelling  by 
men  who  are  unaware  that  in  so  do- 
i66 


PRONUNCIATION 

ing  they  are  unconsciously  proclaiming 
their  own  ignorance  of  phonetics. 

Yet  this  movement  towards  diversity 
is  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the 
movement  towards  uniformity,  which 
the  general  habit  of  reading  has  cre- 
ated. From  the  frequency  with  which 
a  word  is  met  on  the  page  a  picture 
of  it,  as  spelled,  is  insensibly  fixed  in 
the  mind.  It  may  almost  be  said  to 
be  printed  on  the  retina  of  the  eye. 
When,  in  consequence,  the  word  is 
brought  directly  to  the  attention,  and 
along  with  this  comes  the  necessity  of 
using  it  in  speech,  there  is  more  or  less 
of  a  disposition,  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious, to  conform  its  pronunciation  to 
its  ever-present  mental  representative. 
Against  a  usage  which  has  become 
thoroughly  established  this  tendency 
makes  slow  headway;  in  the  case  of  in- 
167 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

dividuals  it  may  make  none  at  all.  But 
in  process  of  time  it  is  sure  to  work  ef- 
fectively upon  a  large  body  of  users  of 
speech.  If  it  once  gains  over  a  part,  its 
ultimate  triumph  is  secure.  We  have 
seen  this  illustrated  in  the  case  oi  china, 
lilac,  asparagus,  and  other  words.  To 
put  the  point  beyond  dispute,  let  us 
trace  the  history  of  the  pronunciation  of 
a  few  more. 

Readers  of  'Vanity  Fair'  may  re- 
member that  the  young  ladies  of  Miss 
Pinkerton's  academy,  at  Chiswick  Mall, 
were  presented  at  their  departure  with 
a  copy  of  Dr.  Johnson's  dictionary. 
They  may  not  have  observed,  however, 
that  the  word  designating  the  work 
was,  in  the  conversations  given,  regular- 
ly spelled  dixonary.  Even  so  it  is  rep- 
resented as  having  been  pronounced  by 
the  august  female  who  presided  over  the 
i68 


PRONUNCIATION 

institute,  the  friend  of  the  lexicographer 
himself,  and  the  correspondent  of  Mrs. 
Chapone.  Thackeray  may  have  erred 
in  carrying  this  pronunciation — at  least 
in  a  place  so  sacred — down  to  so  late 
a  period  as  the  year  just  preceding  the 
battle  of  Waterloo,  but  he  certainly 
made  no  mistake  in  giving  the  impres- 
sion that  it  was  the  one  once  regularly 
heard  in  cultivated  society.  It  existed 
long  before  the  time  specified.  It  can 
be  traced  back  with  certainty  to  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  the  latter  part 
of  that  and  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  the  pronunciation  was  rep- 
resented as  diks'nari  by  the  two  author- 
ities who  chanced  to  mention  this  par- 
ticular word.  In  1726,  in  the  little 
book  of  Bailey's,  already  mentioned,  it 
was  represented  by  dix'nery.  Fourteen 
years  later  'Bailey's  Dicksonary'  is 
169 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

mentioned  by  one  of  the  characters  in 
an  article  contributed  by  Fielding  to 
The  Champion}  In  America,  Noah 
Webster,  writing  in  1789,  gives  dicson- 
ary  as  the  usual  pronunciation.  In  the 
last  decade  of  this  same  century  Walker 
informs  us  that  the  word  was  univer- 
sally pronounced  a  few  years  before  as 
if  written  dixnary,  and  that  a  person 
would  have  been  thought  a  pedant  who 
pronounced  it  according  to  its  orthog- 
raphy. He  felicitated  himself  on  the 
taste  for  improvement  in  speaking 
which  had  been  steadily  growing.  To 
it  he  attributed  the  change  which  had 
taken  place.  So  marked  was  this  that 
at  the  time  his  work  appeared  he  as- 
serted that  any  one  who  pronounced  the 
word  otherwise  than  as  it  was  written 
would  have  incurred  the  imputation  of 
•  Number  for  May  17,  1740. 
170 


PRONUNCIATION 

vulgarity.  The  fact  was  probably  as  he 
represented;  not  so  his  interpretation  of 
the  fact.  There  is  no  need  of  resorting 
to  an  explanation  so  vague  and  general 
as  the  taste  for  improvement  on  the 
part  of  the  pubHc.  The  change  was  but 
an  exemplification  of  the  influence  of 
the  written  speech  which  had  been  be- 
coming steadily  more  effective.  In  this 
particular  instance  the  multiplication 
of  dictionaries,  which  went  on  after  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  brought 
this  word  constantly  and  prominently  be- 
fore the  eyes  of  readers.  The  not  unu- 
sual result  followed.  The  full  sound  fol- 
lowed upon  frequent  sight.  It  is  to  be 
added  that  Thackeray's  spelling  —  with 
an  inserted  o — which  had  previously  been 
used  by  Fielding  and  noted  by  Webster, 
probably  marked  a  pronunciation  which 
held  its  own  in  certain  quarters. 
171 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

This  is  an  illustration  belonging  to  the 
consonant  system  rather  than  the  vowel ; 
but  the  latter  exhibits  its  full  number 
of  examples  of  the  same  tendency.  We 
hear  at  the  present  day,  and  sometimes 
from  the  lips  of  educated  men,  the  verb 
catch  pronounced  as  ketch.  No  really 
virtuous  lexicographer  of  modern  times 
would  be  found  countenancing  any  prac- 
tice of  the  sort.  Most  orthoepists  do 
not  even  condescend  to  be  aware  of  its 
existence.  Yet  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  that  until  a  comparatively 
late  period  it  was  the  common  pro- 
nunciation of  the  word  even  among  the 
educated.  In  the  divorce  which  has 
gone  on  so  long  in  our  language  between 
orthography  and  orthoepy,  it  is  unsafe 
to  hazard  positive  statements  of  any 
kind.  But  in  this  case  there  is  evidence 
pointing  to  the  fact  that  while  in  most 
172 


PRONUNCIATION 

instances  a  has  been  the  vowel  general- 
ly seen  in  writing,  e  has  been  the  one 
generally  heard  in  conversation.  Some- 
times, indeed,  the  spelling  conformed  to 
this  pronunciation.  Examples  of  the 
usage  can  be  adduced  from  various 
periods.  Spenser,  for  instance,  tells  us 
how  the  enchanter  Archimage,  in  his  en- 
deavor to  entrap  the  Red  Cross  Knight, 
placed  spies  upon  his  movements, 

"  To  ketch  him  at  a  vantage  in  his  snares."  * 

From  the  orthoepists  of  the  eighteenth 
century  we  can  get  occasional  traces  of 
the  changes  coming  over  the  sound  of 
the  vowel  in  this  word,  as  in  several 
others.  Nares  had  clearly  heard  of  no 
other  way  of  pronouncing  it  than  ketch. 
A  few  years  later  Walker  censuied  this 
usage,  nor  would  he  give  it  his  sanction 
'  'Faerie  Queene,'  book  ii.,  canto  i.,  4. 
173 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

in  his  dictionary.  Yet  he  admitted  that 
it  was  almost  universally  pronounced 
in  the  capital  like  the  noun  ketch. 
"This  deviation,"  he  continued,  "from 
the  true  sound  of  a  is  only  tolerable  in 
colloquial  pronunciation,  and  ought,  by 
correct  speakers,  to  be  avoided  even 
in  that."  There  spoke  the  stern  ortho- 
epist ;  yet  he  pusillanimously  acquiesced 
in  the  exactly  similar  pronunciation  of 
the  vowel  in  any  and  many. 

Not  so  acted,  it  may  be  remarked 
here,  the  earliest  compiler  of  a  pronounc- 
ing dictionary.  Buchanan,  long  before 
Walker  had  contemplated  a  work  of 
this  character,  had  stoutly  maintained 
the  sound  of  a,  not  only  in  catch,  but  in 
any  and  many  also.  As  regards  the 
first  one  of  these  last  two  he  was  fol- 
lowed by  Sheridan.  This,  however,  was 
pretty  certainly  a  school-master  pronun- 
174 


PRONUNCIATION 

ciation  which  was  little,  if  ever,  heard 
in  polite  society.  But  Buchanan,  who 
was  of  the  type  of  Holofemes,  had  no 
mind  to  bow  the  knee  to  any  fashion- 
able orthoepic  Baal.  He  was  always  in- 
clined to  support  the  cause  of  the  writ- 
ten word  against  the  spoken.  He  would 
not  admit  the  sound  of  e  in  radish. 
About  this  vegetable,  it  may  be  remark- 
ed in  passing.  Walker  did  not  have  the 
same  feeling  of  despondency  which  he 
did  about  the  other  terms  for  food. 
The  word,  he  admitted,  was  commonly, 
though  corruptly,  pronounced  as  if  writ- 
ten reddish.  Still  the  deviation  was  but 
small,  nor  did  he  regard  it  as  "so  incor- 
rigible as  that  of  its  brother  esculents," 
such  as  cucumber  and  asparagus. 

These  are  examples  of  the  encroach- 
ments of   the  vowel  e  upon   a;   but   a 
similar  fortune  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  e 
175 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

at  the  hands  of  i.  The  former,  indeed, 
has  only  gradually  resumed  the  rights 
of  which  it  had  been  deprived  by  the 
latter.  Nearly  all  eighteenth -century 
orthoepists  pronounced  yes  as  if  it 
were  spelled  yis.  Indeed,  Walker  took 
the  pains  to  assure  us  that  while  it 
was  a  mark  of  incorrectness  and  vulgar- 
ity to  give  to  yet  the  sound  of  yit,  the 
best  and  most  established  usage  gave 
to  yes  the  sound  of  yis.  Yit,  thus  rep- 
robated, was  undoubtedly  a  survival 
of  what  was  once  good  usage.  The 
triumph  of  e  over  i  in  its  pronuncia- 
tion merely  preceded  its  later  triumph 
in  yes.  The  same  thing  is  going  on 
before  our  eyes  to-day.  Orthoepists 
rarely  record  changes  till  they  have  es- 
tablished themselves  somewhere  to  an 
extent  which  permits  their  being  no 
longer  disregarded.  None  of  them,  in 
176 


PRONUNCIATION 

consequence,  admits  any  other  pronun- 
ciation of  pretty  than  pritty;  yet  in 
conversation  the  vowel  e  is  beginning 
to  make  itself  heard  in  the  first  sylla- 
ble of  the  word.  Once  recognized,  it 
is  fairly  certain  to  prevail  in  the  end. 
It  is  not  unlikely,  in  consequence,  that 
pritty  will  come  in  time  to  seem  as  ob- 
jectionable to  men  as  does  now  ingine 
for  engine. 

It  would  be  easy  to  enlarge  the  list  of 
examples  in  which  the  spoken  word  has 
been  made  to  conform  to  the  written. 
Construe  has  abandoned  its  ancient  pro- 
nunciation of  con'ster,  though  the  schools 
clung  long  to  the  once-prevalent  prac- 
tice. Walker  resented  this  usage  al- 
most as  if  it  were  a  personal  affront ;  but 
he  felt  obliged  to  recognize  it  and  to  ac- 
cord it  second  place.  "  It  is  a  scandal  to 
seminaries  of  learning,"  he  burst  out, 
177 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

"that  the  latter  pronunciation  of  the 
word  should  prevail  there.  Those  who 
ought  to  be  the  guardians  of  propriety 
are  often  the  perverters  of  it."  Here, 
however,  the  written  word  has  finally 
triumphed,  as  in  several  other  instances. 
No  one  now  pronounces  chart  as  if  it 
were  spelled  kart.  Lawyers  are  pretty 
generally  giving  up  con'isance  for  cog'- 
nizance,  and  military  men  en'sin  for  en- 
sign. Shore  is  not  now  heard  for  sewer. 
Even  shire,  once  regularly  sheer,  has  had 
its  ancient  vowel  sound  replaced,  save  in 
compounds,  by  that  which  the  English 
have  accustomed  themselves  to  give  to 
i.  In  all  these  instances  a  steady  move- 
ment has  gone  on  towards  accommo- 
dating the  spoken  word  to  the  written. 
Colloquial  or  provincial  speech  will  long 
continue  to  retain  the  old  pronuncia- 
tions. But  even  in  those  quarters  they 
178 


PRONUNCIATION 

tend  to  die  out  with  the  increase  of  the 
habit  of  reading  and  the  steadily  wax- 
ing influence  of  the  school-master.  Fur- 
thermore, in  most,  if  not  in  all,  of  the  in- 
stances where  anomalies  now  exist  or 
once  existed,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
current  pronunciation  represents  a  form 
of  the  word  which  at  some  time  or  at 
some  place  prevailed  in  writing  as  well 
as  in  speaking.  Illustrations  of  this  are 
frequent.  As  good  a  one  as  any  is  fur- 
nished by  the  name  itself  of  our  lan- 
guage. We  spell  it  English;  we  pro- 
nounce it  Ing'glish;  and  we  pronounce 
it  so  because  by  many  it  was  once  so 
spelled. 

In  thus  striving  to  make  the  spoken 
word  conform  to  the  written,  we  are 
simply  obeying  the  dictates  of  that 
phonetic  instinct  which,  stunted  as  it 
has  been  with  us  by  our  orthography, 
179 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

still  maintains  a  lively  struggle  for  ex- 
istence in  us  all.  The  growing  disposi- 
tion to  respect  the  right  of  the  written 
speech  is  shown  in  the  tendency  mani- 
fested to  give  the  full  pronunciation  to 
trisyllables  which  once  appeared  as  dis- 
syllables. This  middle  syllable  consisted 
only  of  a  vowel.  It  was  easy  to  sup- 
press, and  it  was  suppressed.  It  is  not 
safe  to  affirm  positively  in  any  particular 
case  how  far  poetry  represents  the  pro- 
nunciation of  the  past.  The  necessities 
of  the  verse  frequently  require  elision, 
and  elision  overrides  the  claims  of  or- 
thoepy. Yet  it  may  be  regarded  as  of 
some  significance  that  Milton,  for  in- 
stance, makes  two  syllables  of  such 
words  as  barbarous,  violent,  popular,  pop- 
ulous, credulous,  to  mention  a  few  out  of 
a  larger  number.  That  is  to  say,  he 
makes  them  so,  if  we  insist  upon  assign- 
i8o 


PRONUNCIATION 

ing  to   the   line    its   exact   number   of 
feet. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  value  we 
attach  to  the  testimony  conveyed  by 
the  practice  of  poets,  there  can  be  no 
question  about  the  evidence  furnished 
by  pronouncing  dictionaries.  Words  in 
which  a  dissyllabic  pronunciation  was 
set  down  frequently  in  the  early  works 
of  this  character  as  the  only  one  have 
in  the  later  ones  the  suppressed  vowel 
sounded.  Venison,  medicine,  business, 
tapestry  are  now  no  longer  heard  as 
words  of  two  syllables  exclusively;  in 
some  of  these  examples  rarely  so,  if 
ever.  Variation  must  have  existed  on 
this  point  at  an  early  date.  Sheridan, 
for  illustration,  has  venison  as  a  word 
of  three  syllables  and  tapestry  as  one  of 
two.  On  the  contrary,  Walker  has  ven- 
ison as  a  word  of  two  syllables  and  tap- 
i8i 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

estry  as  one  of  three.  The  tendency 
shows  itself  in  other  polysyllables.  The 
i  of  ordinary  is  now  regularly  heard,  and 
extraordinary  is  fairly  certain  ultimately 
to  follow  in  its  footsteps.  Nominative 
is  strictly  a  word  of  four  syllables,  but 
in  school  pronunciation  it  is  often  re- 
duced to  three.  Once  this  was  so  gen- 
erally the  case  that  to  sound  the  first  i 
at  all  would  have  seemed  stiff  and  pe- 
dantic. This  vowel,  indeed,  has  disap- 
peared from  ordinance  in  one  of  its 
meanings ;  but  thereby  it  has  created  an 
independent  word,  ordnance.  Damsel  is 
in  something  of  the  same  situation.  It 
has  lost  the  ability  to  resume  its  trisyl- 
labic character  by  being  deprived  of  the 
e  or  i  it  once  possessed.  But,  as  a  com- 
pensation, modern  writers,  beginning 
with  Scott,  have  reintroduced  an  o  from 
a  usage  once  existing.  This  is  to  give  a 
182 


PRONUNCIATION 

more  stately  character  to  the  word,  to 
indicate  the  more  stately  being  it  is 
supposed  to  denote. 

But  the  working  of  this  agency  is 
shown  on  a  much  more  extensive  scale  in 
the  steady  resumption  in  speech  of  con- 
sonants which  were  once  silent.  This 
has  been  going  on  to  some  extent  from 
the  time  that  men  began  to  become 
familiar  with  the  language  as  written. 
Among  the  letters  particularly  affected 
by  this  tendency  are  d  and  t  and  w.  It 
is  not  possible  to  learn  accurately  how 
far  the  dropping  of  these  from  the  pro- 
nunciation once  went .  We  can ,  however , 
make  a  guess  at  the  number  of  words  in 
which  they  must  have  been  silent  from 
the  number  in  which  they  remain  silent 
still.  This  last  statement  is  particularly 
true  of  the  letter  t.  No  one  thinks  of 
pronouncing  it  in  apostle,  epistle,  chestnut, 
183 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Cliristfuas,  and  certain  verbs  having  the 
ending  -oi,  such  as  fasten,  hasten,  listen — 
and  these  are  merely  a  few  of  the  many 
examples  which  could  be  cited.  An- 
swer and  sword  will  furnish  similar  illus- 
trations of  present  usage  in  the  case  of  w. 
The  same  thing  is  true,  though  not  so 
true,  of  d.  In  its  case  it  is  not  so  much 
the  disappearance  of  the  letter  from  ut- 
terance as  is  the  little  stress  it  receives. 
In  ordinary  speech  it  is  often  heard  so 
faintly  that  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  be 
heard  at  all.  Any  one  paying  strict 
heed  to  the  use  of  certain  words — say, 
for  example,  landlord  and  thousand — will 
often  find  it  difficult  to  detect  the  sound 
of  d  at  the  end  of  the  first  syllable  of  the 
one  or  of  the  last  syllable  of  the  other. 
Still,  any  inclination  to  disregard  the  full 
pronunciation  of  final  letters  is  distinctly 
on  the  wane.  The  omission  of  it,  once 
184 


PRONUNCIATION 

common  in  several  words,  is  no  longer 
found.  For  instance,  it  was  not  until 
the  nineteenth  century  that  the  t  of 
currant  was  generally  pronounced.  The 
disposition,  indeed,  to  sound  a  letter 
in  speaking  because  it  exists  in  writing 
goes  at  times  to  somewhat  unreasonable 
lengths.  Public  speakers  are  occasion- 
ally heard  who  strive  painfully  to  pro- 
nounce the  n  of  such  words  as  condemn 
and  contemn,  feeling  very  miserable 
when  they  fail,  and  making  others  feel 
very  miserable  when  they  succeed. 

But  the  two  letters  which  have  the 
most  interesting  history  in  this  respect 
are  /  and  h.  They  have  been  less  af- 
fected, on  the  whole,  by  the  disposition 
of  the  users  of  language  to  let  no  part 
of  the  word  remain  unsounded  that  can 
be  sounded;  for  there  are  combinations 
from  the  pronunciation  of  which  the 
185 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

vocal  organs  of  the  English  retire  baffled. 
Still,  /  is  now  heard  in  several  instances — 
as,  for  example,  chaldron,  falter,  vault — in 
which  it  was  once  silent.  It  is  slowly- 
forcing  its  recognition  in  several  other 
words.  Yet  there  remain  a  respectable 
number  in  which  it  is  not  sounded.  Es- 
pecially is  this  the  case  when  it  belongs 
to  a  syllable  in  which  it  follows  a  or  o 
and  precedes  /,  k,  or  m.  The  words  half, 
folk,  calm,  and  walk  will  serve  as  illus- 
trations. In  such  cases  it  is  that  the 
spoken  language  has  resisted  most  suc- 
cessfully the  encroachment  of  the  writ- 
ten. But  even  here  its  tenure  is  far 
from  secure.  Particularly  is  this  so 
when  the  /  is  preceded  by  o.  Most  or- 
thoepists  give  the  preference  to  its  pro- 
nunciation in  holm,  and  some  authorize 
it  in  yolk. 

In  this  particular,  no  more  entertain- 
i86 


PRONUNCIATION 

ing  controversy  has  there  been  than  that 
which  has  gone  on  concerning  the  word 
golf.  In  the  Scotch  pronunciation  of  it 
the  /  is  not  sounded ;  in  old  days  it  often 
did  not  appear  in  it  when  written.  So 
long  as  the  knowledge  of  the  game  was 
confined  to  the  country  of  its  origin,  va- 
riation naturally  would  not  arise.  But 
as  soon  as  it  passed,  and,  furthermore, 
passed  suddenly,  the  narrow  limits  of 
nationality,  the  name  was  certain  to 
lose  its  provincial  pronunciation.  The 
large  majority  of  men  came  to  know 
the  word  designating  it  only  by  seeing 
it  in  print.  So  making  its  acquaint- 
ance, they  were  reasonably  sure  to  pro- 
nounce it  as  spelled.  This  involved  the 
resumption  in  speech  of  the  letter  hith- 
erto confined  to  the  written  language. 
But  Scotland  insists  that  there  is  but 
one  proper  way  of  pronouncing  the 
187 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

word;  and  because  men  everywhere 
will  not  adopt  that  she  is  in  mourn- 
ing and  refuses  to  be  comforted.  Let- 
ters on  the  subject  are  written  con- 
stantly to  the  newspapers  by  indignant 
North  Britons.  Their  remonstrances 
doubtless  affect  some  weaker  brethren. 
The  indifferent,  however  —  and  these 
constitute  the  vast  majority  —  go  on 
their  way  regardless  of  the  Scotch  or- 
thoepy. The  more  hardened  retort  that 
they  are  doubtless  pronouncing  the  word 
as  did  those  who  invented  or  developed 
the  game.  These  did  not  put  in  its 
name  a  letter  of  which  they  made  no 
use.  It  was  the  slovenly  pronunciation 
of  their  descendants  which  had  caused 
the  /  to  be  suppressed.  All  that  they 
are  doing  now  is  to  restore  to  the  letter 
the  rights  of  which  it  has  been  deprived. 
It  is  the  written  speech  that  is  thus 


PRONUNCIATION 

slowly  bringing  about  changes  in  pro- 
nunciation. The  working  of  this  agency 
can  be  best  shown  by  specific  illustration 
of  the  way  in  which  a  letter  chances  to 
remain  for  a  long  while  silent,  and  then 
comes  to  be  taken  up  in  pronunciation. 
Readers  of  Chaucer  do  not  need  to  be 
told  that  such  words  as  assault,  fault, 
and  default  came  into  the  language  from 
the  Old  French  in  the  forms  assaute, 
faute,  and  defaute.  So  they  were  spell- 
ed; so  they  were  pronounced.  But  in 
process  of  time  men  discovered  that  their 
remote  Latin  originals  contained  an  /. 
Accordingly,  it  was  inserted  in  these 
words.  But  while  their  form  was  thus 
changed,  the  original  pronunciation  con- 
tinued. But  the  letter  was  not  to  en- 
dure forever  the  indignity  of  having 
its  existence  ignored.  It  appealed  con- 
stantly to  the  eye;  and  the  eye  in  time 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

insisted  upon  the  recognition  of  it  by 
the  voice.  Take  the  case  of  fault.  By 
the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury the  /  had  been  almost  universally 
adopted  in  the  spelling;  but  it  was  not 
until  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century  that  its  claim,  though  some- 
times previously  admitted,  was  fully 
established  in  the  pronunciation.  By 
Pope  and  Swift  it  was  regularly  rymed 
with  words  like  ought,  brought,  thought, 
and  taught.  The  remarks  upon  it  by 
Dr.  Johnson  in  his  dictionary  indicate 
that  the  struggle  for  recognition  was  go- 
ing on  actively  in  his  time.  "  The  /,"  he 
said,  "is  sometimes  sounded  and  some- 
times not.  In  conversation  it  is  gener- 
ally suppressed."  Later  orthoepists  re- 
port the  existence  of  the  same  state  of 
things.  It  is  further  borne  out  by  the 
evidence  of  the  literature  produced  at 
190 


PRONUNCIATION 

the  time.  In  'The  Deserted  Village,' 
published  in  1770,  we  are  told  of  the 
school -master: 

"  Yet  he  was  kind,  or,  if  severe  in  aught, 
The  love  he  bore  to  learning  was  in  fault." 

To  US  aught  and  fault  make  an  imperfect 
ryme;  but  to  Goldsmith  and  to  many, 
if  not  to  most,  of  his  contemporaries  no 
better  one  could  be  asked.  It  was  not  in 
the  nature  of  things  that  this  violation 
of  the  rights  of  the  letter  could  endure. 
By  the  end  of  the  century  Walker  felt 
justified  in  applying  to  its  suppression 
the  one  adjective  dearest  to  the  earnest 
orthoepist.     He  termed  it  vulgar. 

Of  these  two  letters,  however,  the  as- 
pirate is  the  more  interesting  and  the 
history  of  its  pronunciation  is  much 
more  striking.  The  dropping  of  it 
seems  to  be  regarded  by  many  Amer- 
igi 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

icans  as  peculiar  to  the  London  cockney 
dialect,  or  at  least  to  Englishmen  of  a 
certain  social  grade.  This  is  quite  wide 
of  the  truth.  The  omission  of  the  sound 
of  h  may  be  said  to  belong  to  all  times 
and  all  countries.  The  Italian  language 
has  given  up  its  pronunciation  and  treats 
it  rather  as  a  mark  of  distinction  than 
as  a  letter.  In  Old  French  also  it 
was  largely  unrecognized.  Nor  can  a 
single  member  of  the  English-speaking 
race  plead  that  he  is  free  from  the 
commission  of  the  offence,  if  offence  it 
be.  None  of  us,  either  in  writing  or 
speaking,  gives  to  it  or  to  able  or 
ability  or  arbor  the  h  to  which,  etymo- 
logically,  each  one  is  entitled.  Worse 
than  that,  we  all  add  it  to  the  origi- 
nal forms  from  which  come  hermit  and 
hostage.  Had  we  not  succumbed  to  the 
influence  of  what  we  now  call  cockney- 
192 


PRONUNCIATION 

ism,  we  should  never  have  prefixed  the 
aspirate  to  these  words;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  we  should  have  been  saying, 
with  great  linguistic  propriety,  ermit  (or 
eremite)  and  ostage.  There  is,  in  conse- 
quence, no  reason  for  any  of  us  to  plume 
ourselves  upon  any  special  orthoepic 
virtue  of  our  own  in  this  matter,  at  least 
no  reason  for  those  of  us  who  believe 
that  safety  lies  in  paying  strictest  heed 
to  derivation. 

Still  it  must  be  deemed  a  somewhat 
singular  fact  that  this  ancient  and  wide- 
spread peculiarity  of  pronunciation  has 
apparently  at  no  time  or  place  ever 
shown  itself  in  America.  Many  usages 
of  English  dialects  have  been  trans- 
planted to  this  country.  In  some  in- 
stances they  have  made  their  way  into 
educated  speech.  But  the  one  most 
striking  and  the  most  far-reaching  of  all 
'3  193 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

has  never  been  carried  over,  or  if  carried 
over  has  never  maintained  itself  suffi- 
ciently to  gain  recognition  anywhere. 
In  England  the  omission  or  addition  of 
the  aspirate  has  become  a  sort  of  social 
shibboleth.  It  has  never  assumed  and 
could  never  assume  that  function  in  this 
country.  Here  the  pronunciation  of  in- 
itial h  is  universal.  No  mistake  in  the 
use  of  it  is  made  by  the  uneducated  any 
more  than  by  the  educated.  The  former 
drop  it  from  the  few  words  where  it  is 
not  sounded  as  correctly  as  do  the  latter. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  it,  in 
general,  as  regards  its  combination  with 
w.  It  is  the  exception,  and  by  no 
means  frequent  exception,  to  find  the 
aspirate  not  distinctly  heard  in  such 
words  as  when  and  which  and  Whig. 
Why  this  marked  difference  should  ex- 
ist in  the  usage  of  the  two  countries  it  is 
194 


PRONUNCIATION 

not  easy  to  understand.  It  is  fully  as 
hard  to  explain  as  why  the  inhabitants 
of  the  United  Kingdom  turn  universally 
to  the  left  in  riding  or  driving  and  the 
inhabitants  of  the  United  States  turn  as 
universally  to  the  right. 

There  are  now  in  English  but  four 
words  beginning  with  h  in  which  the 
initial  letter  is  not  pronounced  by  edu- 
cated men  anywhere.  These  are  heir, 
honest,  honor,  and  hour.  This  usage  ex- 
tends, of  course,  to  their  derivatives. 
Whether  they  will  continue  to  hold  out 
forever  against  the  stream  of  tendency 
which  is  bringing  about  the  resumption 
in  speech  of  letters  once  silent  must  be 
left  to  the  prophets  to  announce.  In 
this  particular  instance  their  predictions 
can  be  uttered  with  perfect  safety. 
None  of  those  now  living  will  survive  to 
witness  their  fulfilment  or  non-fulfil- 
195 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

ment.  So  far  no  one  has  ever  advo- 
cated the  pronunciation  in  them  of  the 
initial  letter  save  Walter  Savage  Lan- 
dor.  He  may  have  been  led  to  take  this 
course  by  the  irritation  he  felt  at  having 
his  own  usage  criticised ;  for  when  it  came 
to  the  employment  of  the  h,  he  is  report- 
ed to  have  frequently  exhibited  distinct 
orthoepic  frailty.  "We  laugh,"  said  he, 
"at  those  who  pronounce  an  aspirate 
where  there  should  be  none ;  but  are  not 
we  ourselves  more  ridiculous  when  we 
deliberately  write  it  before  words  in 
which  it  is  never  pronounced?" 

So  he  argued  earnestly,  but  naturally 
to  no  effect.  Still,  while  there  is  now 
not  the  remotest  sign  of  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  existing  usage,  it  must 
be  kept  in  mind  that  the  influence  of 
the  written  language  is  ceaselessly  op- 
erative. To  some  the  ultimate  fate  of 
196 


PRONUNCIATION 

these  four  words  will  seem  to  be  fore- 
shadowed by  the  wavering  attitude  of 
the  present  users  of  speech  towards  four 
others — herb,  hostler,  humble,  and  humor. 
Until  a  period  comparatively  recent  all 
of  these  generally  dropped  the  h.  Dis- 
cussion about  doing  this  was  going  on, 
as  we  have  seen,  during  the  latter  part 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Then,  as 
now,  there  was  diiference  of  opinion, 
both  among  orthoepists  and  the  edu- 
cated users  of  speech,  as  to  the  proper 
course  to  be  pursued.  Sheridan  sup- 
ported the  pronunciation  of  h  in  herb. 
Walker  its  suppression.  Nor  has  the 
controversy  about  these  words  yet  been 
settled.  Many  still  continue  to  omit 
the  aspirate  in  some  or  all  of  them, 
though  the  number  so  doing  is  perhaps 
becoming  proportionately  smaller.  The 
practice  of  not  pronouncing  the  h  of 
197 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

humble  can  hardly  recover,  it  would 
seem,  from  the  staggering  blow  given  it 
by  Dickens.  Yet  it  still  has  its  sup- 
porters and  defenders.  The  suppres- 
sion in  speech  of  the  same  letter  in 
hostler  has  developed  the  form  ostler  in 
writing.  This  adds  the  strength  of  the 
visible  word  to  the  indisposition  to  pro- 
nounce the  aspirate. 

This  omission  of  the  pronunciation  of 
the  initial  h  is  now  true  of  only  a  few 
words ;  it  must  once  have  been  true  of  a 
large  number.  But  if  so,  no  record  of 
the  fact  has  in  many  cases  come  down 
to  our  time.  In  a  few  instances  we  are 
in  a  position  to  make  positive  state- 
ments. We  know  from  Palsgrave  that 
in  the  sixteenth  century  the  h  of  habit 
and  habitation  was  not  sounded;^  from 

•  Palsgrave's  '  Lesclarcissement  de  la  Langue 
Francoyse'  was  published  in  1530. 

198 


PRONUNCIATION 

Ben  Jonson  that  in  the  early  seven- 
teenth century  the  same  was  true  of  the 
h  of  host.  A  relic  of  this  latter  usage  has 
come  down  to  us  in  the  expression  "mine 
host."  Late  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  h  of  hospital  was  usually  dropped, 
according  to  the  assertions  of  the  most 
authoritative  orthoepists.  It  is  to  be 
observed  that  all  these  words  in  which 
the  aspirate  is  not  pronounced  are  of 
Romance  origin.  They  came  into  our 
language  from  the  Old  French.  In  that 
tongue  they  appeared  frequently  in  writ- 
ing, as  in  speech,  without  the  letter.  In 
this  way,  accordingly,  they  sometimes 
made  their  appearance  in  English,  when, 
in  the  thirteenth  or  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, they  were  introduced  into  the 
tongue.  Of  the  words  which  have  been 
mentioned — and  many  more  might  be 
added  to  the  list — the  forms  eir,  erb, 
199 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

oiest,  onnr,  oiirc,  limbic,  umour  turn  up 
not  unfrequently  in  our  early  literature. 
The  story  to  be  told  about  them  and 
others  like  them  is  essentially  the  same 
as  that  already  told  about  fault.  In 
England,  as  in  France,  the  scribes  fa- 
miliar with  the  Latin  original  restored 
the  h  to  the  written  word.  They  could 
not  and  did  not  restore  it  to  the  pronun- 
ciation. That  came  later;  in  some  cases 
it  has  not  come  at  all. 

Furthermore,  while  the  total  sup- 
pression of  the  aspirate  at  the  beginning 
of  certain  words  or  certain  syllables  of 
compound  words  is  now  limited  to  a 
very  few,  there  is  a  weakened  way  of 
sounding  it  which  leaves  it  in  many  in- 
stances scarcely  recognizable.  This  is 
particularly  true  of  polysyllables  in 
which  the  accent  rests  upon  the  second. 
It  may  be  there  exist  men  who  say  "a 
200 


PRONUNCIATION 

hotel,"  "a  historical  fact,"  but  such  ex- 
pressions are  certainly  uncommon  in 
literature,  if  ever  found  there  at  all. 
The  present  practice  of  using  an  instead 
of  a  before  such  words  may  die  out  in 
consequence  of  the  more  distinct  pro- 
nunciation of  the  h,  but  it  has  not  died 
out  yet.  Indeed,  this  weakened  pro- 
nunciation of  the  aspirate  must  have 
once  been  true  of  many  words  of  Teu- 
tonic origin.  The  authorized  version  of 
the  Bible  represents  the  speech  of  the 
first  half  or  middle  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. It  is  a  somewhat  significant  fact 
that  nearly  all  the  words  in  it  beginning 
with  h  have  usually  the  indefinite  ar- 
ticle an  before  them,  and  not  a} 

'  In  our  version  of  the  Bible  an  invariably 
precedes  the  following  words:  habitation,  hair, 
half,  hand,  handbreadth,  handful,  handmaid, 
hanging,  harlot,  hart,  harvest,  haughty,  haven, 
head,  hearth,  heavy,  hedge,  heifer,  help,  herald, 

20I 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Under  ordinary  conditions  this  ten- 
dency to  resume  in  speech  the  sound  of 
letters  once  silent  would  not  extend  to 
names  of  places.  There  the  local  pro- 
nunciation, supported  as  it  usually  is 
by  centuries  of  usage,  would  hold  its 
own  against  all  change,  as  it  has  in  the 
case  of  the  accent.  But  in  this  matter 
another  agency  has  come  in  which  can- 
not be  disregarded.     This  is  the  extent 

lierb,  herdsman,  lieritage,  hiding-place,  hire, 
hireling,  hollow,  homer,  honeycomb,  honor,  hon- 
orable, hook,  horn,  horror,  horse,  horseman, 
host,  householder,  howling,  humble,  hundred, 
hungry,  husband,  husbandman,  hymn,  hypo- 
crite, hypocritical. 

A  is  used  exclusively  before  the  five  words 
hen,  hind,  home-born,  hot,  huge. 

Before  the  following  both  an  and  a  are 
found:  hairy,  hammer,  hard,  harp,  heap,  heart, 
high,  highway,  hill,  hole,  holy,  house;  but  the 
use  of  an  is  far  more  common  than  the  use 
of  a. 


PRONUNCIATION 

to  which  intercommunication  now  goes 
on  as  a  result  of  the  development  of 
the  railway  system.  It  is  mixing  to- 
gether the  population  of  different  parts 
of  the  same  country  to  a  degree  which 
in  the  past  was  never  deemed  possible. 
Pronunciation  is  one  of  the  things  most 
profoundly  affected  by  it.  Places  are 
now  visited  by  large  numbers,  or  at 
least  brought  to  their  attention,  which 
were  once  known  to  but  a  limited  few. 
Their  names  appear  in  guide-books  and 
train  schedules.  These  proper  nouns, 
like  the  uncommon  common  nouns,  come 
before  the  eyes  of  large  bodies  of  men 
who  have  never  heard  them  uttered. 
The  usual  result  follows.  The  pronun- 
ciation is  made  to  conform,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, to  the  spelling.  All  the  syllables 
are  sounded ;  and  by  the  mere  weight  of 
numbers  following  it,  the  practice  some- 
203 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

times  comes  to  establish  itself  finally 
over  the  local  usage.  The  substitution 
which  is  now  going  on  of  the  full  sound 
of  Cirencester  for  Cissiter,  and  of  An- 
struther  for  Anster  —  to  cite  two  in- 
stances —  simply  typifies  what  is  tak- 
ing place  elsewhere  in  numerous  cases, 
though  perhaps  on  not  so  marked  a 
scale.  Nor  is  the  effect  of  this  influ- 
ence limited  to  towns  comparatively  ob- 
scure. The  d  of  London  was  probably 
never  suppressed  by  all  classes  of  the 
population,  but  there  was  certainly  a 
time  when  in  polite  circles  it  was  not 
the  fashion  to  pronounce  it.  "In  my 
youth,"  said  Rogers,  who  was  born  in 
1763,  "everybody  said  Lonnon  and  not 
London.  Fox  said  Lonnon  to  the  last." 
Rogers  here  meant  everybody  who  was 
anybody  in  the  eyes  of  fashionable  so- 
ciety. Before  he  had  lived  out  half  his 
204 


PRONUNCIATION 

days  he  saw  this  pronunciation  disap- 
pear before  the  influence  of  the  written 
speech. 

Such  is  the  general  trend  of  the  lan- 
guage. But  we  must  guard  ourselves 
against  the  belief  that  any  considerable 
body  of  words  will  be  affected  by  the 
movement  steadily  going  on  to  conform 
the  pronunciation  to  the  spelling.  The 
examples  are  impressive  when  taken  sep- 
arately; their  whole  number  is,  com- 
paratively speaking,  insignificant.  The 
deep-seated  defects  of  our  orthoepic 
system  will  never  be  cured  by  pallia- 
tives of  this  sort.  As  in  accentuation, 
so  there  are  here,  too,  occasional  eddies 
in  the  general  stream  of  tendency.  At 
times  the  spoken  word,  so  far  from  con- 
forming to  the  written,  shows  a  dis- 
tinct tendency  to  depart  from  it.  As 
good  an  illustration  as  any  of  this  sort  of 
205 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

reaction  can  be  found  in  the  present 
English  pronunciation  of  schedule,  to 
which  reference  has  already  been  made. 
This  is  one  of  the  few  words  in  which  the 
pronunciation  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury has  been  definitely  recorded.  In 
the  three  works  in  which  mention  is  then 
made  of  it,  its  first  syllable  is  represented 
by  either  sked  or  sed.  This  continued 
to  be  the  case  during  the  whole  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  No  orthoepist  of 
the  time,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  gave 
the  syllable  any  other  pronunciation 
than  one  of  the  two  just  specified.  Sked 
conformed  best  to  analogy.  In  words 
of  our  tongue  which  have  a  Latin  or 
Greek  original,  ch  has  almost  invariably 
the  sound  of  k.  In  the  case  of  sch  the 
one  notable  exception  now  existing  is 
schism,  in  which  the  ch  is  suppressed 
altogether. 

206 


PRONUNCIATION 

Sked  and  sed  were,  accordingly,  the 
only  two  ways  in  which  orthoepists, 
down  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, represented  the  pronunciation  of 
the  first  syllable  of  schedide.  But  in 
its  case  there  was  then  unmistakably 
manifested  a  tendency  to  abandon  the 
regular  sound  of  ch  heard  in  scheme  and 
school,  and  to  follow  the  example  of 
schism  in  ignoring  it  entirely.  If  ortho- 
epists are  to  be  trusted,  the  latter  was 
much  the  more  prevailing  usage.  The 
practice  may  have  been  handed  down 
from  a  time  when  one  of  the  forms  under 
which  the  word  appeared  was  cedule. 
At  all  events,  the  result  was  that  schism 
and  schedule  came  to  constitute  a  sort  of 
class  by  themselves.  When,  therefore, 
the  pronunciation  of  the  first  syllable  of 
the  latter  as  shed  began  to  be  heard,  it 
must  at  first  have  made  something  of 
207 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  impression  of  being  an  exception  to 
an  exception.  The  precise  time  when 
the  practice  of  so  sounding  it  was  adopt- 
ed generally  in  England  it  is  difficult 
to  ascertain  with  precision.  It  is  as- 
suredly a  singular  fact  that  Walker,  who 
was  careful  to  note  the  variations  of 
usage  in  his  time,  had  apparently  never 
heard  of  shed.  He  knew  it  only  as  a 
theoretical  pronunciation  which  had  no 
existence  in  reality.  It  was  not  au- 
thorized even  in  the  fifth  edition  of  his 
dictionary,  brought  out  in  1809,  two 
years  after  his  death,  but  containing  his 
latest  conclusions  and  corrections.  He 
pointed  out  that  sed  was  then  the  gen- 
eral, though  not  the  exclusive,  pronun- 
ciation. "  Entirely  sinking  the  ch  of 
schedule,"  he  remarked,  "seems  to  be 
the  prevailing  mode,  and  too  firmly  fixed 
by  custom  to  be  altered  in  favor  of  either 
208 


PRONUNCIATION 

of  its  original  words."  By  these  latter 
he  meant  the  Latin  schedule  and  the 
French  schedule. 

Walker's  forecast,  as  we  see,  has  met 
the  usual  fate  of  orthoepic  prophecies. 
Yet  the  regularly  accepted  modern  pro- 
nunciation of  the  word  in  England  seems 
to  have  leaped  into  general  recognition 
with  comparative  suddenness.  The  first 
instance  in  which  I  have  been  enabled 
to  find  it  authorized  is  in  Knowles's  dic- 
tionary of  1835.  The  next  year  it  ap- 
peared in  the  revision  of  Walker  made 
by  Smart.  This  orthoepist  was  clearly 
puzzled  how  to  account  for  the  existence 
of  the  anomaly.  "An  unnecessary  ref- 
erence of  schedule  to  its  French  deni- 
zenship,"  he  wrote,  "with  some  vague 
notion  perhaps  of  the  alliance  of  our  Eng- 
lish sh  to  the  Teutonic  sch  has  drawn  the 
word  into  the  very  irregular  pronuncia- 
14  209 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

tion  of  shed -2ilc."  This  latter  repre- 
sentation of  it  was  one  of  the  actual 
forms  in  which  the  word  had  been  ear- 
lier spelled.  It  may  be,  therefore,  that 
the  corresponding  pronunciation,  though 
unrecognized  by  orthoepists,  had  been 
transmitted  from  father  to  son  for  gen- 
erations. Thus  continuing,  it  passed  in 
the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  bounds  of  the  class  to  which  it  had 
been  confined,  and  became  the  general 
though  not  the  exclusive  favorite  among 
the  users  of  speech  in  England.  This 
seems  to  be  the  best  if  not  the  only  way 
of  explaining  its  sudden  prevalence  after 
having  been  previously  ignored  for  so 
long  a  time.  America,  as  a  whole,  has 
always  been  faithful  to  what  is  strictly 
the  regular  pronunciation  looked  at  from 
the  orthographical  point  of  view. 

The  examples  which  have  been  re- 

2IO 


PRONUNCIATION 

corded  give  some  conception  of  the  in- 
fluences which  have  been  steadily  at 
work  in  modifying  or  changing  pronun- 
ciation. With  the  variations  already 
existing,  and  those  coming  to  exist,  it  is 
not  surprising  to  find  that  orthoepists 
themselves  are  not  unfrequently  in  a 
state  of  perplexity.  Naturally,  much 
more  so  are  the  ordinary  users  of  speech. 
It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  large 
numbers  of  them  should  be  constantly 
hesitating  as  to  the  propriety  of  their 
own  pronunciation.  They  find  them- 
selves at  sea,  tossed  about  by  winds  from 
every  quarter,  and  with  little  apparent 
prospect  of  reaching  any  secure  ortho- 
epical  haven.  The  standard  of  author- 
ity is  what  they  are  clamoring  for;  they 
are  ready  to  submit  to  it  the  moment  it 
has  established  its  right  to  rule.  But 
where  is  it  to  be  found?     It  was  Gold- 

211 


PRONUNCIATION 

smith  who  expressed  a  desire  to  discover 
that  happiest  spot  on  earth  which  all 
pretend  to  know,  but  about  the  exact 
position  of  which  the  representatives  of 
no  two  countries  agree.  It  is  the  same 
in  pronunciation.  Where  exists  that 
perfect  standard  which  all  orthoepists 
assert  or  imply  that  they  have  furnished, 
but  in  the  representation  of  which  in 
numerous  particulars  no  two  of  them 
concur? 


Ill 

FROM  what  quarter  are  we  to  look 
for  the  coming  of  this  infallible 
guide  for  whose  arrival  we  are  all  long- 
ing? It  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  any  of  the  compilers  of  dictionaries, 
and  to  but  few  of  those  who  consult 
them,  that  the  simple  solution  of  the 
whole  difficulty  is  that  in  the  matter 
of  pronunciation  there  is  no  standard 
of  authority  at  all.  Nor,  as  things 
now  are,  can  there  be.  Pronunciation 
must  and  will  vary  widely  among  per- 
sons of  equal  intelligence  and  cultiva- 
tion. A  dictionary  which  sets  out  to  es- 
tablish on  a  solid  base  an  authoritative 
standard  is  bound  to  take  into  account 
213 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  practice  of  the  whole  body  of  edu- 
cated men  the  world  over  who  are  en- 
titled to  consideration.  How  is  that  to 
be  ascertained  ?  The  mere  statement  of 
the  fact  shows  its  physical  impossibility. 
It  is  a  task  beyond  the  power  of  any  one 
person  or  any  number  of  persons  to  ac- 
complish. 

Even  this  is  not  the  worst.  If  every- 
body worth  consulting  could  be  consult- 
ed, we  should  still  be  left  in  precisely  the 
same  state  of  uncertainty  in  which  we 
were  before.  Dr.  Johnson  saw  at  once 
the  difficulty  in  the  way  when  Sheridan's 
proposal  of  a  pronouncing  dictionary 
was  brought  to  his  attention  in  1761. 
"Sir,"  said  he,  "what  entitles  Sheridan 
to  fix  the  pronunciation  of  English  ?  He 
has,  in  the  first  place,  the  disadvantage 
of  being  an  Irishman;  and  if  he  says  he 
will  fix  it  after  the  example  of  the  best 
214 


PRONUNCIATION 

company,  why,  they  differ  among  them- 
selves. I  remember  an  instance:  when 
I  published  the  Plan  for  my  Dictionary, 
Lord  Chesterfield  told  me  that  the  word 
great  should  be  pronounced  so  as  to 
rhyme  to  state;  and  Sir  William  Yonge 
sent  me  word  that  it  should  be  pro- 
nounced so  as  to  rhyme  to  seat,  and  that 
none  but  an  Irishman  would  pronounce 
it  grait.  Now  here  were  two  men  of  the 
highest  rank,  the  one  the  best  speaker  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  the  other  the  best 
speaker  in  the  House  of  Commons,  differ- 
ing entirely."  It  is  typical  of  the  un- 
certainty attending  the  whole  matter — 
by  some  it  will  be  held  typical  of  the 
fortunes  of  the  distressful  country — that 
in  the  middle  of  the  century  Sir  William 
Yonge  should  declare  that  only  an  Irish- 
man would  pronounce  great  so  as  to 
ryme  to  state;  while  towards  the  end  of 
215 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  same  century  Walker  is  found  de- 
claring, with  equal  positiveness,  that 
practically  none  but  Irishmen  pro- 
nounced it  so  as  to  ryme  to  seat. 

Still  this  belief  in  the  existence  of  a 
standard  authority  is  one  that  will  die 
hard  even  with  the  educated  class. 
With  the  semi  -  educated  class  it  will 
never  die  at  all.  The  most  venerable 
of  the  myths  concerning  it  is  that  it  is 
found  flourishing  somewhere  in  London 
and  its  environs.  This  is  a  superstition 
which  the  inhabitants  of  that  city  are 
naturally  disposed  to  believe  in  them- 
selves and  to  encourage  in  others.  They 
are  apt  to  reward  with  praise  those  who 
accept  and  proclaim  this  view,  and 
to  visit  with  censure,  if  not  with  con- 
tumely, those  who  dissent  from  it.  One 
reason  for  the  popularity  of  Worcester's 
dictionary  in  England  was  due  to  the 
216 


PRONUNCIATION 

fact  that  he  loudly  professed  to  conform 
the  pronunciation  authorized  in  it  to  the 
usage  of  London.  No  one  stopped  to 
ask  how  he  managed  to  acquire  it.  The 
usage  of  London,  indeed,  might  reason- 
ably be  taken  as  a  guide,  for  lack  of  a 
better,  if  any  one  would  or  could  be 
good  enough  to  tell  us  what  the  usage 
of  London  really  is.  So  far  this  has 
never  been  done.  The  dictionaries 
which  profess  to  record  it  record  it  dif- 
ferently. They  could  not  well  do  other- 
wise. There  prevails  now,  and  always 
has  prevailed,  diversity  of  pronuncia- 
tion among  the  educated  inhabitants  of 
that  city  as  among  the  similar  dwellers 
of  any  other  place. 

The  futility  of  this  widely  proclaimed 
standard  is  fully  recognized  even  in  Lon- 
don itself  by  those  most  competent  to 
form  an  opinion.     In  1869  the  late  Alex- 
217 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

ander  Jolin  Ellis  brought  out  the  second 
part  of  his  great  work  on  the  pronun- 
ciation of  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare.  In 
the  course  of  the  discussion  it  came  in 
his  way  to  consider  this  very  question. 
In  referring  to  the  authorities  usually 
followed  by  his  fellow-countrymen  — 
necessarily  including  those  of  his  own 
city — he  informed  us  that  Smart's  of 
1846  and  Worcester's  of  1847  were  the 
pronouncing  dictionaries  then  most  in 
vogue  in  England.  The  ^  very  mention 
of  the  latter  as  one  of  the  two  works 
of  this  character  highest  in  favor  with 
Englishmen  reduces  to  an  absurdity  the 
usage  of  London  as  a  final  authority. 
When  the  inhabitant  of  that  city  wished 
to  satisfy  his  mind  about  the  exact  qual- 
ity of  that  pure  and  perfect  pronuncia- 
tion, to  the  possession  of  which  he  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  born,  he  proceeded 
218 


PRONUNCIATION 

half  the  time  to  consult  the  pages  of  an 
American  lexicographer. 

How,  in  turn,  did  this  American  lexi- 
cographer arrive  at  the  knowledge  of 
that  usage  which  he  was  careful  to  pro- 
claim as  the  standard  ?  He  was  born  in 
New  Hampshire  in  1784;  he  was  grad- 
uated at  Yale  College  in  1 8 1 1 ;  he  after- 
wards taught  school  in  Salem,  Massachu- 
setts, and  in  1819  removed  to  Cambridge, 
in  the  same  State,  and  there  spent  the 
rest  of  his  life.  In  1831  he  went  to  Eu- 
rope, and  was  abroad  for  a  few  months. 
This  seems  the  only  noticeable  instance 
where  he  was  away  from  New  England 
for  any  length  of  time.  During  his  brief 
absence  from  his  own  country  he  visit- 
ed Scotland,  France,  Holland,  and  Ger- 
many, as  well  as  England.  Accordingly, 
his  stay  in  London  must  have  been  very 
short  at  the  best.  Precisely  who  it  was 
219 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

there  who  supphed  him  with  the  unadul- 
terated article  of  pronunciation  in  use 
in  that  city,  or  whether  he  picked  it  up 
by  his  own  unaided  efforts,  the  account 
given  of  his  life  neglects  to  inform  us. 
Certainly,  if  he  ever  secured  it  by  per- 
sonal study  on  the  spot — and  that  is 
the  only  course  of  procedure  that  would 
entitle  him  to  be  spoken  of  as  an  au- 
thority— it  must  have  been  during  the 
few  weeks  that  he  was  there.  At  all 
events,  however  obtained,  he  imported 
it.  Then,  after  purifying  it  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  Cambridge  and  Boston,  he 
exported  it  to  England.  It  was  in  this 
way  that  the  Londoner  frequently  got 
his  pure  London  pronunciation  from  a 
citizen  of  this  country  who  was  never 
outside  of  New  England  for  more  than  a 
few  months  of  his  life. 

This  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Lon- 


PRONUNCIATION 

don  usage  furnished  by  Worcester  has 
been  given  as  if  it  were  the  result  of 
genuine  investigation  pursued  by  him 
on  the  spot.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  noth- 
ing of  the  kind  took  place.  It  was  in 
the  following  way  he  arrived  at  it.  He 
studied  in  his  own  library  the  pronounc- 
ing dictionary  of  everybody  who  had 
taken  the  pains  to  compile  one,  whether 
he  were  Englishman,  Irishman,  Scotch- 
man, or  American.  Wherever  they  dif- 
fered, he  recorded  their  variations.  Out 
of  these  he  selected  the  particular  pro- 
nunciations which  suited  best  his  own 
taste  or  for  any  reason  commended 
themselves  to  his  judgment.  To  them 
he  gave  his  approval.  Almost  inevita- 
bly they  would  be  the  ones  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  using  himself  and  of  hearing 
generally  used  by  those  with  whom  he 
associated.     Out   of  this   conglomerate 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

the  usage  of  London,  so  far  as  Worcester 
can  be  said  to  represent  it,  was  manu- 
factured in  America ;  and  the  article  thus 
manufactured,  if  Ellis  can  be  trusted, 
was  largely  accepted  in  England. 

The  truth  is  that  the  pronunciation  of 
every  dictionary  expresses  the  prefer- 
ences and  prejudices  of  the  particular 
person  or  persons  who  have  been  con- 
cerned in  its  compilation.  At  best  it 
represents  the  taste  of  a  select  coterie  to 
whose  members  the  accidents  of  birth 
and  training  and  circumstance  have 
made  familiar  certain  ways  of  pronounc- 
ing words.  It  is  a  question,  indeed — 
or,  rather,  it  is  not  a  question — how  far 
any  individual,  no  matter  how  vast  his 
acquirements,  how  wide  his  acquaint- 
ance, how  extensive  his  opportunities 
for  observation,  can  be  deemed  compe- 
tent, in  the  case  of  a  single  disputed  pro- 

222 


PRONUNCIATION 

nunciation,  to  speak  for  the  whole  of 
the  English  race  whose  usage  is  entitled 
to  consideration.  Under  the  most  fa- 
vorable conditions  our  means  for  arriv- 
ing at  a  correct  conclusion  in  any  given 
case  are  necessarily  restricted.  We  can 
talk  with  but  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  persons;  we  can  hear  but  a 
small  number  of  public  speakers.  These 
are  the  only  sources  of  direct  informa- 
tion; and  these  are  soon  exhausted. 
For  any  extension  of  our  knowledge  we 
must  rely  upon  the  testimony  of  others. 
These,  in  turn,  are  subject  to  the  same 
limitations  as  ourselves.  At  best,  there- 
fore, our  mastery  of  the  subject  can  be 
but  imperfect.  In  consequence,  when 
one  says  that  he  has  never  heard  such 
and  such  a  pronunciation,  it  is  really  no 
proof  that  the  pronunciation  does  not 
exist,  and  perhaps  exist  on  a  large  scale. 
223 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

No  more  arduous  task  can  well  be 
conceived  than  that  of  ascertaining  the 
pronunciation  of  a  whole  people.  This 
is  so,  even  when  the  attempt  is  confined, 
as  is  implied  throughout  in  this  discus- 
sion, to  the  usage  of  the  educated  class. 
No  one  who  properly  appreciates  the  dif- 
ficulty of  the  quest  as  well  as  its  mag- 
nitude, would  undertake  it  light-hearted- 
ly. No  one  who  has  studied  the  sub- 
ject, even  superficially,  would  care  to 
express  himself  with  much  positiveness 
on  many  points.  Yet  there  is  nothing 
more  common  than  to  hear  some  person 
lay  down  dogmatically  what  is  the  uni- 
versal practice  of  England  or  of  Amer- 
ica. In  general  it  can  be  assumed  with 
absolute  safety  that  the  man  so  doing, 
whether  Englishman  or  American,  is 
peculiarly  ignorant  of  the  usage  of  his 
own  country.  Orthoepists  themselves, 
224 


PRONUNCIATION 

with  all  their  attention  to  the  subject, 
frequently  exhibit  their  lack  of  knowl- 
edge, and  are  sometimes  compelled  to 
confess  it.  Walker  tells  us  that  until 
he  had  inspected  the  dictionaries  he  had 
not  conceived  that  there  could  be  two 
pronunciations  of  hearth.  The  examina- 
tion of  these  revealed  to  him  that  there 
were  authorities  who  gave  its  ea  the 
sound  it  had  in  earth — the  word,  indeed, 
with  which  it  is  made  to  ryme  by  Mil- 
ton. Had  he  further  read  the  reviews 
of  the  dictionaries  which  came  out  in 
his  own  time,  he  would  have  discovered 
that  there  were  men  to  stigmatize  as 
slovenly  his  practice  of  giving  to  the  ea 
of  this  word  the  sound  it  has  in  heart. 
Pronunciations,  too,  lost  to  orthoepic 
recognition  in  one  quarter  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking world  may  be  found  em- 
ployed and  sanctioned  in  some  other. 
IS  225 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

Take  the  case  of  lever.  The  pronuncia- 
tion Itjo'er  was  the  only  one  authorized 
by  Webster  in  his  original  edition  of 
1828.  It  has  been  retained  in  that  work 
ever  since,  though  no  longer  made  exclu- 
sive. The  extensive  circulation  of  this 
dictionary  in  America  has  carried  to  all 
parts  of  the  land  this  particular  usage. 
On  the  other  hand,  its  existence  is  not 
even  conceded,  so  far  as  my  knowledge 
extends,  in  a  single  modern  dictionary 
compiled  in  England.  There  it  is  invari- 
ably le'vcr.  But  this  was  not  always  the 
case.  Lev'er  is  the  pronunciation  author- 
ized by  some  of  the  eighteenth -century 
orthoepists.  It  was  probably  the  only 
one  ever  heard  by  Webster.  And  though 
utterly  unrecognized  by  the  dictionaries 
now  brought  out  in  the  mother-country, 
it  is  far  from  unlikely  that  places  can  be 
found  there  in  which  it  is  still  employed. 
226 


PRONUNCIATION 

In  this  matter  no  man,  nor  even 
any  body  of  men,  can  cover  the  whole 
ground.  How  Hmited  is  the  knowledge 
possessed  by  any  of  us,  no  matter  who, 
of  the  pronunciation  employed  by  our 
fellow-men  of  the  same  station  in  life 
and  of  the  same  degree  of  education  can 
be  made  manifest  by  a  notable  example. 
There  has  already  been  occasion  to  speak 
of  the  late  Mr.  Ellis.  He  was  an  ortho- 
epist  of  exceptional  attainments.  He 
joined  to  amplest  scholarship  in  his  spe- 
cialty the  most  extensive  observation. 
If  any  man  could  be  pointed  out  as  cer- 
tain to  be  acquainted  with  all  the  varia- 
tions of  usage  existing  in  his  own  land, 
he  would  in  all  probability  have  been  the 
one  selected.  That  he  failed  wo  fully  in 
the  slight  attempts  he  made  to  give  some 
conception  of  American  pronunciation 
is  not  to  his  discredit.  The  data  upon 
227 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

which  he  based  his  conclusions  were  in- 
adequate and  sometimes  incorrect.  In 
regard  to  his  own  countrymen,  however, 
he  was  subject  to  no  such  limitations. 
Yet  he  tells  us  that  he  only  knew  of  the 
pronunciation  of  vase  which  rymes  it 
with  case,  "from  Cull's  marking."  Here 
[is  meant  Richard  Cull,  who  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  orthoepy  of  Ogilvie's 
Comprehensive  English  Dictionary,  pub- 
lished in  1863.  Yet,  at  the  time  Ellis 
wrote,  this  sound  of  s  had  been  fully 
recognized  for  a  good  deal  more  than 
a  hundred  years.  It  had  long  been  a 
subject  of  discussion  among  orthoepists. 
It  had  been  sanctioned  by  several  of 
them  besides  the  one  mentioned  —  for 
instance,  by  Craig,  in  1849,  and  by  La- 
tham, in  1870.  Though  Ellis  had  never 
heard  the  pronunciation,  it  must,  ac- 
cordingly, have  been  employed  by  no 
228 


PRONUNCIATION 

inconsiderable  number  of  his  country- 
men. 

Much  more  noticeable  were  his  re- 
marks upon  trait.  This  French  word, 
when  adopted  into  English,  naturally 
brought  with  it  at  first  its  French  pro- 
nunciation. The  final  t  was  not  sound- 
ed. This  continued  to  be  the  case  for  an 
exceptionally  long  time.  The  word  did 
not,  indeed,  come  into  very  general  use 
till  after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Dr.  Johnson,  though  introduc- 
ing it  into  his  dictionary,  spoke  of  it  as 
"scarce  English."  As  regards  its  pro- 
nunciation, that  characterization  re- 
mained largely  true  for  more  than  a  cen- 
tury. "Even  now,"  wrote  Latham,  in 
1870,  "though  the  word  is  common,  few 
venture  to  pronounce  it  as  an  English 
word."  Mr.  ElHs,  in  his  observations 
on  American  pronunciation,  selected  the 

22Q 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

sounding  of  its  final  t  as  one  thing  sure 
to  betray  the  nationality  of  the  speaker. 
His  words  imply  that  in  the  United 
States  the  final  letter  was  invariably 
heard,  and  that  just  as  invariably  it  was 
never  heard  in  England.  As  a  general 
observation  the  remark  was  true;  as  a 
specific  test  it  was  likely  at  any  mo- 
ment to  break  down.  Mr.  Ellis's  asser- 
tion was  contained  in  a  work  published 
in  1874.  Yet  the  pronunciation  of  the 
final  t  of  trait  had  for  more  than  a  cen- 
tury been  recognized  by  English  ortho- 
epists  as  allowable.  Even  as  early  as 
1764  it  was  the  single  one  sanctioned  by 
Buchanan.  A  third  of  a  century  later 
Walker  had  declared  that  the  /  was  be- 
ginning to  be  sounded.  Accordingly,  he 
authorized  its  use.  It  was  not,  indeed, 
admitted  by  Smart  into  his  revision  of 
Walker;  yet  in  1848  it  was  the  only  one 
230 


PRONUNCIATION 

given  by  Boag.  In  1870  it  appeared  as 
an  alternate  in  the  dictionary  of  Latham, 
and  similarly  in  1872  in  that  of  Cham- 
bers. Furthermore,  within  a  few  years 
after  Ellis's  observations  had  been  pub- 
lished the  sounding  of  the  final  t  was 
not  only  adopted  in  works  like  the  Im- 
perial and  the  Encyclopaedic,  but  pref- 
erence was  given  to  it.  A  complete 
change  of  front  in  matters  of  pronuncia- 
tion is  not  the  work  of  a  few  months  or 
years.  Dictionaries  appearing  shortly 
before  and  soon  after  1874  did  not  au- 
thorize the  pronunciation  of  the  final  t 
of  trait  unless  Englishmen  had  been  pre- 
viously in  the  habit — to  some  extent  at 
least — of  so  pronouncing  it.  As  a  shib- 
boleth to  detect  the  American  the  word 
in  consequence  was  always  liable  to  prove 
a  failure.  Still,  if  a  man  like  Ellis  can- 
not be  relied  upon  to  be  familiar  with  the 
231 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

practice  of  his  own  countrymen,  what 
confidence  can  we  possibly  have  in  those 
who  undertake  to  speak  for  us  all  ? 

In  days  of  old  there  used  to  be  ex- 
hibited by  many  an  almost  touching 
faith  in  the  verbal  omniscience  of  lexi- 
cographers. If  a  word  did  not  appear 
in  the  dictionary,  it  was  assumed  that  it 
did  not  exist  in  the  language.  Probably 
very  few  educated  persons  can  now  be 
credited  with  this  childlike  trust  in  the 
completeness  of  any  vocabulary.  Yet 
it  prevails  with  fullest  force  in  regard 
to  the  pronunciation.  There  is  little 
left  of  that  old  spirit  which  at  the  be- 
ginning questioned  the  authority  of  the 
compilers  of  works  dealing  with  it,  de- 
nounced them  for  the  practices  they 
authorized,  and  instructed  them  as  to 
the  usage  which  prevailed  in  the  best 
society — which,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
232 


PRONUNCIATION 

was  the  usage  of  the  reviewer  himself. 
Orthoepists,  to  be  sure,  have  now  taken 
care  to  avert,  in  a  measure,  criticism 
of  this  sort.  They  record  the  varying 
views  of  about  every  one  who  has  gone 
to  the  trouble  of  putting  his  pronuncia- 
tion into  print — at  least  into  a  printed 
volume.  So  in  modern  times,  just  as  we 
have  variorum  Shakespeares,  we  may  be 
said  to  have  variorum  pronouncing  dic- 
tionaries. This  fact  really  exempts  us 
from  the  necessity  of  paying  to  any  one 
of  these  works  that  unquestioning  defer- 
ence which  it  does  not  venture  to  assume 
as  due  to  itself.  By  giving  us  the  choice 
of  two  or  more  pronunciations  of  certain 
words  it  disclaims  any  pretension  to  be 
recognized  as  a  binding  authority.  The 
moment  it  concedes  that  one  way  is  not 
the  only  way,  what  is  to  prevent  him 
who  consults  it  from  insisting  that  there 
233 


THE    STAN  DARD    OF 

is  still  another  and  a  better  way  which 
it  has  failed  to  record? 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  while  the 
pronouncing  dictionary  is  an  authority 
of  more  or  less  value,  it  is  never  a  final 
authority.  On  this  matter,  having  been 
concerned  to  some  extent  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  works  of  this  nature,  I  speak 
from  the  point  of  view  of  personal  ex- 
perience. I  have  protested  to  no  pur- 
pose against  the  authorization  of  cer- 
tain pronunciations.  I  have  succeeded 
in  getting  one  or  two  sanctioned  which 
had  not  previously  been  recognized  as 
allowable.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
add  that  the  knowledge  of  these  I  shall 
take  precious  good  care  to  keep  to  my- 
self. But  where  did  I  get  any  authority, 
either  in  the  way  of  protest  or  advocacy, 
over  thousands  of  other  English  speak- 
ers, to  decide  how  any  particular  word 
234 


PRONUNCIATION 

should  be  pronounced?  From  no  quar- 
ter could  it  come,  for  in  none  did  it  exist. 
The  simple  explanation  of  the  matter  is 
that  it  was  my  fortune  to  be  in  a  position 
where  my  personal  preferences  met  with 
a  certain  degree  of  consideration. 

In  this  matter  the  proper  attitude  for 
every  educated  man  to  take  is  that  once 
exemplified  by  Dr.  Bacon,  for  a  long 
while  the  pastor  of  Center  Church,  New 
Haven.  He  was  assailed  for  his  pro- 
nunciation of  a  certain  word.  It  was 
not  according  to  Webster,  he  was  told. 
The  clergyman  was  personally  acquaint- 
ed with  the  man  held  up  to  him  as  a 
guide,  and  very  evidently  had  an  opin- 
ion of  his  own  as  to  the  respect  due  to 
him  as  an  authority.  That,  indeed, 
may  be  thought  to  be  countenanced  in 
the  excellent  dictionary  which  bears  the 
lexicographer's  name;  for  it  has  been 
235 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

carefully  weeded  of  a  large  share  of  the 
results  upon  which  its  original  compiler 
particularly  prided  himself.  At  all  events 
the  doctor  showed  no  disposition  to  sub- 
mit to  the  correction.  "What  right  has 
Webster,"  growled  he,  "to  dictate  my 
pronunciation  ?  He  is  one  of  my  parish- 
ioners, and  he  ought  to  get  his  pronun- 
ciation from  me,  and  not  I  from  him." 

There  is  nothing  peculiar  in  this  atti- 
tude on  the  part  of  those  who  have  paid 
close  attention  to  the  subject.  No 
scholar,  for  instance,  will  question  for  a 
moment  the  knowledge  of  this  whole 
matter  possessed  by  the  late  Mr.  Ellis, 
who  has  already  been  quoted.  His  em- 
inence as  an  orthoepist  would  be  ad- 
mitted by  all;  his  superiority  would  be 
conceded  by  most.  To  the  right  he  had 
to  speak  with  authority  not  a  single  one 
of  the  lexicographers  who  have  been 
236 


PRONUNCIATION 

mentioned  can  make  the  least  pretence. 
Yet  this  is  what  he  said  on  this  very- 
point:  "It  has  not  unfrequently  hap- 
pened," he  wrote,  "that  the  present 
writer  has  been  appealed  to  respecting 
the  pronunciation  of  a  word.  He  gen- 
erally replies  that  he  is  accustomed  to 
pronounce  it  in  such  and  such  a  way, 
and  has  often  to  add  that  he  has  heard 
others  pronounce  it  differently,  but  he 
has  no  means  of  deciding  which  pronun- 
ciation ought  to  be  adopted,  or  even  of 
saying  which  is  the  more  customary." 
Here  we  have  put  in  small  compass  the 
exact  state  of  the  case  by  the  man  who, 
while  he  was  living,  was  usually  reck- 
oned among  the  very  first,  if  not  the  very 
first,  of  English  orthoepists. 

This,  however,  is  a  doctrine  not  loved 
of  the  multitude.     Each  of  us  is  inclined 
to  cherish  his  Webster  or  his  Worcester, 
237 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

or  any  other  lexicdgrapher  he  happens 
to  select,  and  woe  unto  the  person  who 
does  not  submit  to  the  authority  he  ac- 
knowledges. There  is  no  objection,  in- 
deed, to  any  man's  conforming  his  own 
practice  to  that  of  some  particular  guide. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  both  convenient 
and  comfortable;  under  ordinary  con- 
ditions it  may  almost  be  called  neces- 
sary. But  there  is  decided  objection  to 
the  disposition  he  is  apt  to  display  of  in- 
sisting that  the  pronunciation  which  his 
authority  teaches  is  the  only  one  that 
can  be  properly  said  to  exist,  or,  to  put 
it  a  little  differently,  that  can  be  said 
to  exist  properly.  In  this  respect  the 
modern  Gileadite — to  revert  to  the  illus- 
tration with  which  this  treatise  began — 
has  proved  himself  far  inferior  to  his 
prototype.  The  latter  knew  that  there 
were  several  passages  of  the  Jordan,  and 
238 


PRONUNCIATION 

took  pains  to  secure  them  all.  His 
sanguinary  imitator  of  the  present  day, 
not  conscious  of  the  number  in  exist- 
ence, fancies  that  when  he  has  got  pos- 
session of  one,  he  has  become  master  of 
the  only  crossing.  Supremely  intoler- 
ant and  supremely  self-complacent  is 
the  man  who  has  been  brought  up  on 
a  single  dictionary.  Especially  is  this 
the  case  if  he  has  happened  to  teach  to 
others  the  pronunciation  it  gives,  for  so 
long  a  time  that  the  employment  of  any 
different  one  seems  to  him  of  the  nature 
of  a  blow  at  the  very  foundations  of  our 
speech.  It  is  fair  to  admit,  however, 
that  this  class  of  persons,  once  very 
numerous,  have  now  come  to  be  rele- 
gated more  and  more  to  the  remotest 
recesses  of  the  rural  districts.  The  rapid 
multiplication  of  guides  and  manuals 
and  lexicons  during  the  last  twenty 
239 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

years  enables  him  who  provides  him- 
self with  them  all  to  secure  for  his  own 
private  use  almost  any  pronunciation 
he  prefers.  In  the  multitude  of  dic- 
tionaries there  is  safety;  for  it  is  then 
in  our  power  to  pit  one  lexicographer 
against  another,  and  to  assume  a  super- 
cilious attitude  towards  the  one  who  fails 
to  authorize  the  pronunciation  which  we 
recommend  by  our  own  practice. 

Nor,  indeed,  can  we  feel  a  sense  of 
security  in  pinning  our  faith  without  re- 
serve to  the  orthoepy  of  any  single  lexi- 
cographer. The  original  compiler  may 
and  sometimes  does  change  his  mind. 
If  his  work  is  successful  enough  to  justify 
revision,  he  is  not  unlikely  at  a  later 
period  to  concede  some  particular  pro- 
nunciation to  be  permissible  which  pre- 
viously he  had  been  disposed  to  reject 
altogether.  Consequently  his  disciple's 
240 


PRONUNCIATION 

opinion  of  what  is  improper,  if  not  of 
what  is  proper,  will  depend  in  a  measure 
upon  the  particular  edition  of  the  same 
dictionary  which  he  chances  to  have  in 
his  possession.  Even  if  the  original 
compiler  remain  faithful  to  the  pronun- 
ciation he  first  authorized,  his  revisers 
are  sure  not  to  remain  faithful  to  him. 
They  alter  without  scruple.  There  is 
not  a  single  dictionary,  successive  edi- 
tions of  which  have  appeared,  that  has 
not  undergone  more  or  less  of  modifica- 
tion of  the  orthoepy  it  recommended. 
The  practice  of  so  doing  began  early. 
In  1797,  when  Sheridan  had  been  but 
nine  years  in  his  grave,  a  fourth  edition 
of  his  work  was  brought  out,  as  its  title- 
page  declared,  "revised,  corrected,  and 
enlarged."  The  name  signed  to  the 
preface  as  the  one  responsible  for  the 
changes  made  was  T.  Churchill.  Who- 
16  241 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

ever  he  may  have  been,  one  reason  for 
his  selection  as  reviser  must  have  been 
on  account  of  his  supposed  familiarity 
with  the  subject  of  orthoepy.  Indeed, 
he  tells  us  himself  that  to  speak  with 
propriety  was  an  accomplishment  of 
which  he  was  early  ambitious.  At  all 
events,  many  of  Sheridan's  pronuncia- 
tions went  by  the  board.  In  some  in- 
stances the  changes  made  will  seem  to 
modem  ears  for  the  worse  and  not  for 
the  better.  For  illustration,  Churchill 
altered  the  pronunciation  of  break, 
which  Sheridan  rymed  with  sake,  into 
breek,  so  as  to  ryme  with  seek.  This 
may  have  a  somewhat  strange  sound 
now,  but  it  was  no  uncommon  usage 
then.  It  may  be  remarked,  in  pass- 
ing, that  this  latter  pronunciation  was 
disapproved  by  Walker  on  high  philo- 
sophical grounds.  The  word,  he  as- 
242 


PRONUNCIATION 

sured  us,  was  "much  more  expressive 
of  the  action  when  pronounced  brake 
than  breek,  as  it  is  sometimes  affectedly- 
pronounced." 

But  though  diversity  is  likely  to  en- 
sue to  some  extent  from  the  multiplica- 
tion of  pronouncing  dictionaries,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  influence  of  these 
works  is,  on  the  whole,  conducive  to 
uniformity.  The  reasons  for  this  restdt 
are  obvious.  Orthoepists,  as  a  class, 
are  a  very  conservative  body  of  men. 
They  may  almost  be  deemed  timid. 
Every  new  competitor  for  the  public 
favor  is  sure  to  consult  the  works  on  the 
same  subject  already  in  existence.  If 
he  himself  has  been  in  the  habit  of  em- 
ploying a  particular  pronunciation,  and 
has  been  accustomed  to  hear  it  so  em- 
ployed in  the  society  of  which  he  forms 
a  part,  he  is  none  the  less  awed  when  he 
243 


THK    STANDARD    OF 

comes  to  find  it  unrecognized  as  existing 
at  all  in  good  usage  by  the  authorities 
to  whom  he  more  or  less  defers.  He 
hesitates  to  sanction  what  none  of  his 
predecessors  have  seen  fit  to  approve. 
He  often  does  it,  to  be  sure,  but  he  does 
it  reluctantly;  and  he  sometimes  re- 
frains from  doing  it  even  when  he  has 
very  positive  convictions  of  his  own. 
The  result  is  that  the  same  pronuncia- 
tions of  the  same  words  are  copied  from 
one  dictionary  into  another,  and  to  a 
large  extent  transmitted  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  Moreover,  all  or- 
thoepists  are  by  their  nature  hostile  to 
the  exceptional  and  the  anomalous. 
The  weight  of  their  collective  authority 
is  generally  against  deviations  from  the 
analogy  of  the  language.  Even  when 
they  submit,  they  are  inclined  to  do  it 
under  protest.  As  on  such  points  they 
244 


PRONUNCIATION 

all  tend  to  agree,  their  agreement  affects 
the  practice  of  those  who  consult  them, 
and  this  is  a  constant  factor  working  to 
produce  uniformity. 

Furthermore,  the  dictionary,  wher- 
ever it  goes,  carries  with  it  very  largely 
its  own  orthoepy.  The  work,  if  suc- 
cessful, reaches  bodies  of  men  scattered 
far  and  wide.  It  imposes  upon  the  timid 
or  the  indifferent  among  them  the  pro- 
nunciations it  authorizes;  and  in  these 
two  classes  may  be  reckoned  the  im- 
mense majority  of  those  who  use  it  as  a 
work  of  reference.  The  average  man 
has  no  desire  to  incur  the  opprobrium 
which  falls  upon  singularity.  If  he  be 
at  all  sensitive  to  criticism  —  and  most 
men  are  so — he  prefers  to  fall  in  with 
the  prevailing  practice.  This  will  nat- 
urally be  the  practice  recommended  by 
the  dictionary  having  the  widest  circu- 
245 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

lation.  The  general  adoption  of  what 
it  authorizes  causes  its  pronunciation 
to  triumph  by  the  mere  weight  of  num- 
bers. This  was  particularly  observable 
of  Walker's  in  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Even  now,  in  spite  of 
numerous  deviations  which  have  come 
to  prevail,  it  still  remains  true  that  he 
has  continued  to  affect  English  ortho- 
epy profoundly.  The  same  thing  can  be 
said  of  Webster  in  America.  The  im- 
mense circulation  of  his  dictionary  in  the 
United  States  after  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  has  had  a  distinct 
influence  in  assimilating  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  all  parts  of  the  country. 

No  one,  indeed,  can  compare  the  or- 
thoepy authorized  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  with  that  author- 
ized at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  with- 
out becoming  aware  that  there  has  been 
246 


PRONUNCIATION 

a  steady  movement  towards  uniform- 
ity. Many  pronunciations  then  sanc- 
tioned by  orthoepists  of  high  repute  are 
now  no  longer  known  at  all;  at  least, 
they  will  be  searched  for  in  vain  in 
modern  dictionaries.  Who  now,  for  in- 
stance, knows  of  such  a  disease  as  dys- 
en'tery  ?  Yet  this  is  the  accentuation  of 
the  word  given  by  Dr.  Johnson.  Who 
would  think  now  of  pronouncing  the  g 
hard  in  such  words  as  gymnastic,  hetero- 
geneous, homogeneousf  Yet  this  was  not 
unusual  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth.  The 
practice  was  defended  on  the  ground 
that  they  were  derived  from  the  Greek, 
where  the  letter  had  the  sound  so  desig- 
nated. Such  a  course  of  action,  with 
the  reason  given  for  it,  kindled  Walker's 
wrath  to  the  highest  pitch.  "Both  the 
learned  and  the  unlearned  coxcombs," 
247 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

he  wrote  under  oxygen,  "conspire  to  pro- 
nounce this  word  as  well  as  hydrogen  and 
nitrogen  with  the  g  hard." 

The  remark  just  quoted  is  significant 
of  the  attitude  taken  frequently  by  or- 
thoepists.  Walker,  in  particular,  did 
all  he  could  to  bully  men  into  what 
he  deemed  correct  pronunciation.  No 
deviation  from  what  he  considered  the 
analogies  of  the  language  met  favor  in 
his  eyes.  Others  might  tamper  with 
the  unclean  thing.  Not  so  he.  By 
joining  the  two  words  in  the  same  sen- 
tence, he  plainly  intimated  his  opinion 
that  any  one  who  gave  to  the  first  syl- 
lable of  idyl  the  pronunciation  id  was 
little  other  than  an  idiot.  Nares  had 
consented  to  giving  the  hard  sound  of  g 
to  gymnastic.  But  he  doubted,  he  said, 
a  little  the  practice,  though  not  the 
propriety.  Walker  understood  him  to 
248 


PRONUNCIATION 

express  just  the  opposite  opinion  and 
was  disposed  to  rebuke  him  for  deaUng 
with  this  heresy  so  mildly.  "There  can 
be  no  doubt,"  he  wrote,  severely,  "of  the 
absurdity  of  the  usage  and  of  the  neces- 
sity of  curbing  it  as  much  as  possible." 
To  curb  it  took  a  long  time.  The  classi- 
cal influence  gave  way  slowly.  As  late 
as  1826  Walker's  usage  was  in  turn 
denounced  and  stigmatized.  In  the 
Nodes  Ambrosiancs  for  November  of 
that  year  Hogg  is  represented  as  speak- 
ing of  an  article  in  the  preceding  August 
number  on  the  subject  of  what  appears, 
as  written  there,  Jymnastics.  The  speak- 
er is  at  once  taken  to  task.  "Jymnas- 
tics!" says  Tickler.  "James — if  you 
love  me — G  hard.  The  other  is  the 
Cockney  pronunciation." 

But  though  the  pronouncing  diction- 
ary may  do  something,  and  even  much, 
249 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

to  produce  uniformity,  it  cannot  do 
everything.  It  is  only  occasionally  con- 
sulted, while  the  word  itself  is  seen  fre- 
quently. This,  in  consequence,  is  likely 
to  be  pronounced  according  to  any  one 
of  the  numerous  different  ways  which  a 
language,  arbitrarily  spelled,  easily  per- 
mits. Hence,  diversities  of  pronuncia- 
tion are  always  cropping  up;  and,  as  has 
already  been  pointed  out,  it  is  largely  a 
matter  of  chance  whether  or  no  any  one 
of  these  shall  find  permanent  record.  It 
depends  almost  entirely  upon  the  inde- 
pendence or  the  caprice  of  the  particu- 
lar man  responsible  for  the  orthoepy  of 
a  particular  work.  We  must  bear  in 
mind  that  no  dictionary  ever  recorded 
all  the  pronunciations  which  have  been 
or  are  sanctioned  by  good  usage.  Some 
one  of  these  hitherto  unrecognized  is  in 
consequence  liable  at  any  time  to  pre- 
250 


PRONUNCIATION 

sent  itself  on  the  pages  of  a  new  compila- 
tion. This  is  a  disturbing  element  which 
has  always  to  be  taken  into  account. 
The  forces  which  produce  uniformity 
are,  on  the  whole,  stronger  than  those 
which  produce  diversity;  but  they  are 
not  a  great  deal  stronger.  There  is  no 
question  that  a  much  more  general 
agreement  prevails  in  usage  now  than 
there  did  a  century  and  more  ago.  Yet 
how  far  uniformity  is  yet  from  having 
accomplished  its  perfect  work  a  brief 
statement  will  show.  The  International 
Dictionary  gives  a  list  of  between  fifteen 
and  sixteen  hundred  words  which  are 
pronounced  differently  by  different  or- 
thoepists.  To  this  number  the  Stand- 
ard adds  several  hundred.  Neither  of 
these  most  valuable  works  attempts  to 
record  pronunciations  which  once  ex- 
isted, and  may  still  exist  somewhere. 
251 


THE   STANDARD    OF 

Not  even  does  the  one  which  furnishes 
the  fuller  list  include  all  that  could 
have  been  given,  and  are,  indeed,  to  be 
found  authorized  in  modern  diction- 
aries of  repute.  These  facts  speak  for 
themselves.  Uniformity  of  pronuncia- 
tion among  the  men  of  our  race  is  an 
orthoepic  dream  which,  as  matters  now 
stand,  has  the  remotest  possible  chance 
of  being  realized. 

In  truth,  there  is  within  limits  scarcely 
any  peculiarity,  not  to  say  atrocity,  of 
pronunciation  which  cannot  now  plead 
justification  from  some  authority  of 
standing.     This    is    but    another   proof  m 

that  the  orthoepy  of  works  of  this  char- 
acter represents  not  the  ascertained 
practice  of  cultivated  society  as  a  whole 
but  that  of  some  particular  region  of 
country,  or  of  some  particular  set,  or  oc- 
casionally of  some  particular  individual. 
252 


PRONUNCIATION 

Even  the  New  England  provincialism 
naytional  —  so  spelled  by  Lowell  in  the 
'  Biglow  Papers ' — can  be  found  sanc- 
tioned by  one  of  our  most  widely  circu- 
lated dictionaries.  In  thus  pronouncing 
the  initial  syllable  it  has  yielded  to  a  ten- 
dency which  has  at  times  swept  along 
in  its  current  orthoepists  when  dealing 
with  certain  other  words.  We  can  see 
it  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  dispute 
which  has  gone  on  in  regard  to  the  word 
knowledge  since  at  least  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  To  this  day 
men  can  be  found  who  indignantly  in- 
sist upon  pronouncing  its  first  syllable 
like  the  verb  know.  The  objection  to 
so  doing  and  to  naytional  is  that  such  a 
course  violates  one  of  the  very  few  or- 
thoepic  laws  which  continue  with  much 
tribulation  to  keep  up  a  sort  of  struggle 
for  existence  in  our  tongue.  This  is  that 
253 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

a  derivative  from  a  word  whose  vowel  is 
long  shortens  the  vowel  of  the  primitive. 
The  same  rule  applies  also  to  compounds. 
Thus,  for  example,  from  beast  we  get 
bestial;  from  cone,  conical;  from  meter, 
metrical;  from  sphere,  spherical;  from 
zeal,  zealous;  from  sheep,  shepherd;  from 
vine,  vineyard.  Accordingly,  from  na- 
tion we  should  expect  ndsh-unal,  just  as 
we  have  natural  from  nature.  But  in 
English  orthoepy  rules  exist  mainly  for 
the  purpose  of  furnishing  opportunities 
for  the  creation  of  exceptions.  It  is 
almost  needless  to  add  that  in  the  ob- 
servance of  the  one  just  specified  there 
has  been  no  consistency.  From  its  au- 
thority, indeed,  partisans  of  classical 
quantity  have  always  been  much  dis- 
posed to  dissent.  We  can  find  in  sev- 
eral works,  for  the  orthoepy  of  which 
these  men  are  responsible,  heroism  pro- 
254 


PRONUNCIATION 

nounced  as  he'roisni.  Even  he'roine 
occasionally  obtrudes  itself  upon  the 
attention.  It  was  probably  under  a 
somewhat  similar  influence  that  the 
authorizer  of  naytional  sanctioned  this 
particular  pronunciation. 

I  am  far,  however,  from  wishing  to  be 
understood  as  objecting  to  pronouncing 
manuals  and  dictionaries.  So  long  as 
we  continue  to  write  one  language  and  to 
speak  another  they  are  a  necessity  of  the 
situation.  Nor  need  it  be  denied  that 
there  is  a  certain  degree  of  peril  in  ad- 
vocating the  doctrine  here  advanced,  es- 
pecially for  that  by  no  means  Hmited 
number  of  individuals  who  have  ac- 
quired or  unconsciously  adopted  pro- 
nunciations which  are  under  the  ban  of 
cultivated  society.  It  may  also  be  at- 
tended with  a  certain  degree  of  discour- 
agement to  such  as  aim  to  impart  the 

255 


THE   STANDARD    OF 

best  usage  to  those  for  whose  education 
they  feel  personal  responsibility.  There 
can  be  no  question  that  the  adoption  of 
the  views  here  maintained  would  tend  to 
chill  enthusiasm.  One  has  to  believe 
firmly  that  social  salvation  or  perdition 
lies  in  a  particular  way  of  pronouncing 
a  word,  to  make  him  really  earnest  in 
the  necessary  and  sometimes  disagree- 
able task  of  correcting  others.  If  all  are 
to  be  saved,  no  matter  how  they  pro- 
nounce, the  missionary  spirit  has  lost  its 
strongest  impelling  motive.  It  is  really, 
however,  against  the  monstrous  claims 
put  forth  for  the  sanctity  of  particu- 
lar persons  who  set  out  to  instruct 
us  in  orthoepy  that  the  argument  in 
this  treatise  has  been  directed.  Yet 
any  such  line  of  reasoning  is  always 
liable  to  be  wrested  from  its  legiti- 
mate object  into  a  disavowal  of  the 
256 


PRONUNCIATION 

necessity  of  heeding  any  instruction  at 
all. 

As  a  practical  question,  however,  the 
acceptance  of  such  a  belief  will  not 
materially  affect  the  action  of  any  con- 
siderable number.  In  the  matter  of 
pronunciation  few  men  could  be  pre- 
vailed upon  to  proceed  independently. 
They  prefer  to  be  relieved  of  the  neces- 
sity of  deciding  for  themselves,  and  are 
ready  to  submit  to  the  guide  or  guides 
recommended  to  them  by  those  in 
whom  they  have  trust.  But,  it  may  be 
asked,  how  can  there  be  any  instruction 
worth  heeding  if  the  position  here  taken 
is  correct?  We  are  told  that  no  par- 
ticular work  of  the  many  existing  is  to  be 
accepted  as  authoritative.  Can,  then, 
the  agreement  of  all  be  entitled  to  this 
epithet?  If  so,  what  is  the  nature  of 
the  logical  process  by  which  opinions 
17  257 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

individually  worthless  become  by  their 
combination  an  infallible  guide?  Ob- 
jections of  this  sort  have  been  raised 
against  the  view  here  expressed.  They 
rest,  however,  upon  a  misconception. 
The  individual  work  is  usually  entitled 
to  high  respect.  So  far  from  being 
worthless,  it  represents  the  best  results 
reached  by  a  certain  person  or  by  cer- 
tain persons  who  have  devoted  time  and 
thought  and  special  study  to  the  sub- 
ject. They  are  usually  trained  observ- 
ers who  have  employed  all  the  oppor- 
tunities at  their  disposal  to  familiarize 
themselves  with  the  usage  they  deem 
best  accredited.  Their  work,  to  be  sure, 
is  in  a  necessarily  limited  field ;  but  that 
field  they,  as  a  rule,  strive  to  cover  care- 
fully. The  conclusions  they  draw  and 
promulgate  carry,  therefore,  weight  un- 
der any  circumstances.  Under  some 
258 


PRONUNCIATION 

circumstances  they  carry  great  weight. 
Accordingly,  he  who  submits  his  own 
practice  to  that  announced  as  correct 
by  a  particular  guide  is  following  a  per- 
fectly legitimate  and  sensible  course.  It 
is  equally  legitimate  and  sensible  to  en- 
force it  upon  those  for  whose  education 
he  is  responsible. 

This  is  the  general  rule.  But  it  must 
be  kept  in  mind  that  just  here  occurs  an 
important  limitation  which  most  are  too 
much  inclined  to  disregard.  The  pro- 
nouncing dictionary  which  a  man  uses 
exists  for  his  own  guidance;  it  does  not 
enable  him  to  criticise  the  practice  of 
those  who  dissent  from  its  teachings.  It 
will  furnish  a  standard  of  authority,  but 
not  the  standard  of  authority.  It  is 
nothing  more  than  one  of  several  stand- 
ards, and,  so  far  as  the  representation 
of  the  best  usage  is  concerned,  will  be 
259 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

surely  no  worse  than  some  and  prob- 
ably no  better  than  others.  The  deci- 
sions of  orthoepists  arc  usually  entitled 
to  high  consideration  when  they  tell  us 
how  we  have  the  right  to  pronounce. 
When  they  go  further,  and  tell  us  how 
we  ought  not  to  pronounce,  they  are  on 
much  less  assured  ground.  If  this  be  true 
of  them,  it  is  much  more  true  of  those 
who  consult  them.  He  who  desires  to 
express  positive  opinions  not  merely 
upon  what  can  be  done,  but  upon  what 
cannot  be  done,  must  be  prepared  to 
undergo  the  additional  burden  of  famil- 
iarizing himself  with  the  pronunciations 
authorized  by  all  the  numerous  current 
guides  which  exist.  Against  their  agree- 
ment it  is  ordinarily  unwise  to  contend. 
It  is  only  the  man  whose  superiority  of 
knowledge  is  universally  conceded  that 
can  venture  to  challenge  the  correctness 
260 


PRONUNCIATION 

of  the  verdict  rendered  by  all  orthoepists, 
coming  as  they  do  from  every  region  of 
the  English-speaking  world,  and  repre- 
senting widely  scattered  and  essentially 
different  bodies  of  cultivated  men.  To 
those  who  have  not  reached  the  position 
of  safety  just  indicated  the  advice  given 
by  Dr.  Parr  conveys  the  needed  warn- 
ing. He  found  fault  with  a  gentleman 
for  putting  the  accent  on  the  penult  of 
Alexandria.  The  latter  defended  him- 
self by  quoting  the  authority  of  Bentley, 
who  in  this  particular  had  conformed 
to  the  classical  practice.  "Bentley  and 
I,"  rejoined  the  old  scholar,  "may  call 
it  Alexandria,  but  you  had  better  pro- 
nounce it  Alexan'dria." 

In  the  consideration  of  this  subject  I 
have  confined  myself  mainly  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  changes   which   have   taken 
place  during  the  last  one  hundred  and 
261 


THE    STANDARD   OF 

fifty  years.  Before  that  time  we  must 
rely  for  any  assertion  we  make  upon  in- 
ferences drawn  from  ryme  or  from  plays 
upon  words  to  be  found  usually  in  dra- 
matic pieces,  and  upon  observations 
contained  in  works  which  make  merely 
incidental  references  to  orthoepy.  It  is 
hard  enough,  as  we  have  seen,  to  tell 
how  the  men  of  our  own  day  pronounce. 
From  the  restricted  sources  of  informa- 
tion at  our  command  which  have  just 
been  mentioned,  we  can  get,  accordingly, 
some  faint  conception  of  the  altogether 
harder  task  of  discovering  how  men  pro- 
nounced in  times  past.  In  particular, 
the  testimony  from  verse  is  always  to  be 
received  with  caution.  The  scarcity  of 
ryme  in  our  tongue,  of  which  Chaucer 
complained,  has  compelled  poets  to  treat 
as  allowable  for  that  purpose  many 
words  which  are  not  precisely  alike  in 
262 


I 


PRONUNCIATION 

sound.     In  the  incidental  observations, 

# 

too,  of  writers,  the  personal  equation  has 
always  to  be  taken  into  account.  Rare- 
ly can  we  feel  full  assurance  that  the 
pronunciation  alleged  is  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  community  generally  and 
not  that  of  the  individual  or  of  a  very 
few.  These  are  the  difficulties  that 
meet  us  in  attempting  to  ascertain  the 
usage  of  the  remote  past.  But  begin- 
ning with  the  latter  half  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  we  are  on  tolerably  safe 
ground.  Numerous  dictionaries  then  ap- 
pearing, devoting  to  orthoepy  amplest 
consideration,  give  us  a  right  to  make 
certain  positive  statements.  These 
works,  it  is  true,  are  far  from  agreeing 
with  one  another;  but  a  comparison  of 
them  all  enables  us  to  arrive  at  fairly 
accurate  conclusions  in  regard  to  par- 
ticular words,  and  to  comprehend,  in  a 
263 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

way,  the   general   trend   of   pronuncia- 
tion. 

The  examples  of  divergence  which 
have  been  given  could  have  been  very 
largely  increased.  But  enough,  it  would 
seem,  have  been  recorded  in  this  slight 
survey  of  the  subject  to  justify  the  con- 
clusions which  have  been  suggested  or 
indicated  in  the  preceding  pages.  For 
the  sake  of  convenience  it  may  be  well 
to  sum  them  up  in  a  few  sentences.  The 
first  is  that  no  one  pronouncing  diction- 
ary can  be  regarded  as  the  final  stand- 
ard of  authority.  Nor,  in  the  second 
place,  can  the  concurrent  voice  of  all  of 
them  put  together  be  thus  considered. 
It  may,  however,  be  conceded  that  their 
agreement  approaches  so  near  to  this 
position  that  it  is  ordinarily  unsafe  for 
the  individual  to  oppose  his  practice  to 
their  united  authority.  He  is  not  likely 
264 


PRONUNCIATION 

to  take,  knowingly,  that  risk  unless  he 
has  something  of  the  spirit  of  the  martyr 
and  is  fully  prepared  to  encounter  the 
martyr's  fate.  The  least  that  can  be 
expected  by  him  who,  through  indiffer- 
ence or  independence,  runs  counter  to 
accepted  orthoepic  conventions,  is  to 
have  inquiries  made  or  insinuated  as  to 
the  region  of  country  from  which  he 
came  or  as  to  the  character  of  the  so- 
ciety in  which  he  was  brought  up.  Still, 
in  his  time  of  greatest  trial  he  can  be 
sustained  by  the  reflection  that  there  is 
nothing  permanent  about  this  general 
agreement.  It  is  likely  to  be  broken  up 
at  any  moment  by  the  entrance  of  a 
new  authority  with  new  deviations  from 
the  hitherto  authorized  usage.  A  third 
conclusion  is  that  while  uniformity  is  an 
ideal  ever  to  be  striven  for,  it  is  one 
which  will  never  be  fully  realized.  With 
265 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

our  present  orthography  it  can  never  be 
reaUzed  even  remotely.  As  a  practical 
question,  indeed,  this  inability  to  attain 
it  is  of  little  moment.  Educated  men  of 
our  race  can  be  understood  by  English- 
speaking  educated  men  everywhere.  If 
they  are  not,  it  is  not  the  fault  of  their 
pronunciation  but  of  their  enunciation. 
Uniformity,  too,  would  have  its  draw- 
backs for  some.  Scores  of  persons 
would  be  deprived  of  the  pleasure  they 
have  in  feeling  that  their  individual 
way  of  pronouncing  words  is  a  mark  of 
their  social  superiority. 

But  as  things  now  are,  uniformity  of 
orthoepy  is  with  us  an  impossibility. 
There  can  never  exist  that  infallible 
guide  for  whose  appearance  we  are  all 
longing  until  the  spelling  of  every  Eng- 
lish word  carries  with  it  its  own  pronun- 
ciation. Even  then  variation  of  accent 
266 


PRONUNCIATION 

must  continue  to  show  itself,  though  it 
will  be  reduced  to  the  lowest  possible 
limits.  But  how  infinitely  remote  is 
such  a  prospect  no  one  needs  to  be  told. 
Even  were  the  conditions  all  favorable, 
long  and  rough  is  the  road  that  must  be 
travelled  before  any  such  result  could  be 
reached  in  a  language  like  ours  which 
enjoys  and  rejoices  in  the  distinction  of 
being  the  most  barbarously  spelled  of 
any  cultivated  tongue  in  Christendom. 
We  are  weltering  in  an  orthographic 
chaos  in  which  a  multitude  of  signs  are 
represented  by  the  same  sound  and  a 
multitude  of  sounds  by  the  same  sign. 
Our  race  as  a  race  has,  in  consequence, 
lost  the  phonetic  sense.  What  can  we 
hope  for  the  orthoepy  of  a  tongue  in 
which,  for  illustration,  the  short  sound 
of  e,  found  in  let,  is  represented  by  ea  in 
head,  by  eo  in  leopard,  by  ay  in  says,  by 
267 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

at  in  said,  by  ci  in  heifer,  and  by  a  in 
many  ?  Or  of  the  correspondingly  long 
sound  given  by  us  to  the  same  vowel, 
which  is  represented  by  e  in  mete  (to 
measure),  by  ea  in  meat  (an  article  of 
food),  or  by  ee  in  the  verb  meet;  and, 
furtheraiore,  by  i  in  magazine,  by  ie  in 
believe,  by  ci  in  receive,  by  ^o  in  people, 
and  by  ae  in  aegis?  Or  take  the  sound 
denoted  by  the  digraph  sh,  seen  in  ship. 
It  is  represented  by  ce  in  ocean,  by  «' 
in  suspicion,  by  5t  in  dimension,  by  ii 
in  nation,  by  ^t  in  anxious,  by  5ci  in 
conscience,  by  c/i  in  machine,  and  by  s 
followed  by  «  in  57<r^.  There  is  no  ob- 
ject in  heaping  up  further  harrowing  de- 
tails, which,  indeed,  could  be  multiplied 
almost  indefinitely.  They  have  been  in- 
troduced merely  to  show  how  hopeless 
is  the  prospect  of  attaining  under  such 
conditions  a  uniform  standard  of  pro- 
268 


PRONUNCIATION 

nunciation  which  all  will  recognize  at 
once,  and  to  which  all  will  unquestion- 
ingly  bow. 

The  conditions,  accordingly,  are  un- 
favorable on  the  side  of  the  language  it- 
self ;  they  are  full  as  unfavorable  on  that 
of  the  users  of  the  language.  Most  of 
us  love  our  present  orthography — love 
it  for  its  uncouthness,  its  barbarousness, 
its  unfitness  to  do  the  very  work  for 
which  orthography  is  presumed  to  exist 
at  all.  We  cling  with  passionate  devo- 
tion to  its  worst  anomalies.  We  not 
merely  shudder  at  the  prospect  of  chang- 
ing a  spelling  which  defies  all  attempts 
at  proper  pronunciation,  but  at  one 
that  in  addition  disguises  completely 
the  derivation,  about  which  in  other  in- 
stances we  profess  to  be  profoundly  solic- 
itous. Even  the  pettiest  alterations  in 
the  interest  of  a  mere  mechanical  uni- 
269 


THE    STANDARD    OF 

formity  meet  with  the  sturdiest  resist- 
ance. On  this  whole  subject,  indeed, 
there  is  no  ignorance  so  profound  and 
comprehensive  as  that  which  envelops 
the  minds  of  many  men  of  letters,  if  we 
can  judge  of  the  degree  of  their  knowl- 
edge by  the  character  of  their  utter- 
ances. It  requires  a  far  more  enlight- 
ened opinion  than  prevails  yet  among 
the  large  majority  of  these  before  we 
can  look  for  the  success  of  any  effort  to 
cause  our  tongue  to  approach  even  re- 
motely to  the  phonetic  excellence  of  Ital- 
ian or  Spanish  or  German.  Yet,  until 
that  time  comes,  no  small  share  of  our 
lives  will  be  spent  in  the  profitable  and 
exciting  occupation  of  consulting  dic- 
tionaries, in  the  equally  profitable  and 
exciting  discussion  of  the  pronunciation 
of  particular  words,  and  in  airing  our 
opinions  and  delivering  our  decisions 
270 


PRONUNCIATION 

upon  points  about  which  one  thorough- 
ly educated  man  is  as  good  an  authority 
as  another  and  nobody  is  an  authority 
at  all. 


INDEX    TO    WORDS 


Academy,  124. 
Acceptable,   153. 
Adjourn,  148. 
Advertisement,   123. 
Alexandria,  261. 
Anstruther(Anster) , 

204. 
Answer,  184. 
Any,   174. 
Apostle,   183. 
Apotheosis,  137-140. 
Arbutus,  1 59-161. 
Asparagus,  84,  87-89, 

168,  175. 
Aspirant,  127. 
Assault,  189. 

Balcony,  129. 
Balmoral,  161. 
Barbarous,  180. 
Been,  37-39. 
Begin (ning),  73. 
Bestial,  254. 
Blasphemous,  90. 
Boil(bile),   98,    100, 

lOI. 

18 


Break,  242. 
Broil  (brile),  98. 
Business,  181. 

Calm,  186. 
Canorous,  149. 
Carbine,  156. 
Carmine,  156. 
Cartel,  156. 
Catch,  172-174. 
Certain  (sartin) ,  96. 
Chaldron,  186. 
Character,  91,  92. 
Chart,  178. 
Chayny.     See  China. 
Cheerful,  72. 
Chestnut,  183. 
China,  47,  83,  168. 
Choir,  104. 
Christmas,  184. 
Cirencester,  204. 
Clark.     See  Clerk. 
Clergy(clargy),    97, 

98. 
Clerical,  97. 
Clerk,  94,  95,  97,  98 

73 


INDEX    TO    WORDS 


Cognizance,  17S. 
Coin,  1 01. 
Colonel,  48,  83. 
Compromise,  164. 
Condemn,  185. 
Confessor,  154. 
Confiscate,  128,  140. 
Conical,  254. 
Const  rue(conster), 

177. 
Contemn,  185. 
Contemplate,       127- 

129. 
Contemplative,  140. 
Contrary,  91. 
Conventicle,  140,  143- 

145- 
Corollary,  125. 
Coronel,  48. 
Cowcumber ,  84,86,88, 

89. 
Creature  (critter),  92. 
Credulous,  180. 
Cucumber,  84,  86,  88, 

^  '75- 
Currant,  185. 

Damosel,  182. 
Damsel,  182. 
Decorous,  148-152. 
Default,  189. 
Demonstrate,  127,128, 

146. 
Derby,  97. 
Detestable,  123. 


Dictionary,  168-171. 
Dysentery,  247. 

Either,  109-112. 
English,  179. 
Ensign,  178. 
Epistle,  183. 
European,  43,  44. 
Extirpate,  127. 
Extraordinary,  182. 

Falter,  186. 
Fasten,  184. 
Fault,  189— 191,  200. 
Fearful,  72. 
Fierce,  71. 
Figure.  93,  94. 
Finance,  156. 
Folk,  186. 
Frumenty,  85. 
Furmenty,  85. 
Furmete,  85. 

Garden,  46. 
Gazette,  156. 
Girl,  56. 
Gold,  112,  114. 
Golf,  187,  188. 
Grass  (asparagus),  89. 
Great,  215. 
Guard,  46. 

Gymnastic(s) ,  247, 
248. 

Habit,  198. 
74 


INDEX    TO    WORDS 


Habitation,  198. 
Half,  186. 
Hasten,  184. 
Hearth,  36,  225. 
Heir(eir),  195,  199. 
Herb(erb),  197,  199. 
Heroine,  255. 
Heroism,  254. 
Hertford,  97. 
Heterogeneous,  247. 
Historical,  201. 
Holm,  186. 
Homogeneous,  247. 
Honest(onest),       195, 

200. 
Honor(onur),  195,200. 
Horizon,  154. 
Hospital,  199. 
Host,  199. 
Hostile,  22. 
Hostler,  197,  198. 
Hotel,  201. 
Hour(oure),  195,  200. 
Humble(umble),    36, 

197,  198,  200. 
Humor (umour),  200. 
Hydrogen,  248. 

Idyl,  248. 
Ile(oil),  98. 
Illustrate,   91,    141, 

142. 
Imperceptible,  142. 
Indecorous,  149. 
Indisputable,  122. 

2 


Inexplicable,  122. 
Innian (onion),  85. 
Inquiry,  158. 
Interesting,  14. 
Inundate,  127,  135. 
Invalid,  164. 
Issue,  65. 

Jersey,  97. 
Join(jine),  98-102. 
July, 43, 156-158. 

KETCH(catch),  172- 

174. 
Kind,  45. 
Knowledge,  253. 

Landlord,  184. 
Laylock,  83. 
Leisure,  36. 
Levant,  156. 
Lever,  226. 
Lilac,  83,  168. 
Listen,  184. 
London,  204. 

Many,  174. 

Medicine,  181. 

M  erchan  t  (marchant) , 

95- 
Metamorphosis,     136, 

140. 
Metrical,  254. 
Mischievous,  91. 
Museum,  158. 

75 


INDEX    TO    WORDS 


National,  253-255. 
Natural,  254. 
Nature(nater),  92,  93. 
Neither,  109-1 1 2. 
Niagara,  162. 
Nitrogen,  248. 
Nominative,  182. 

Oblige,  116-119. 
Oil,  98,  102. 
Onion,  85. 
Opponent,  158. 
Ordinance,  182. 
Ordinary,  182. 
Ordnance,  182. 
Ostler,  198. 
Oxygen,  248. 

Petard,  156. 
Phlegmatic,  153. 
Picture (picter),  92. 
Pierce,  71. 
Pin(ning),  73. 
Plethoric,  127. 
Point  (pint),  98. 
Poison (pison),  98. 
Popular,  180. 
Populous,  180. 
Pretty,  177. 
Pronunciation,  6. 

QuiNE(coin),  1 01. 
Quire,  104. 

Radish,  175. 


Remonstrate,  141 ,  147. 
Ring(ing),  73. 
Rome,  113. 

Sausage (sasage),    86, 

87. 
Schedule,  23,  206-210. 
Schism,  206,  207. 
Schismatic,  153. 
Serjeant,  97. 
Sermon  (sarmon),  96. 
Serpent (sarpent),  96. 
Service (sarvice),  96. 
Sewer,  178. 
Shepherd,  254. 
Shibboleth,  4. 
Shire,  178. 
Shore  (sewer),  178. 
Sing(ing),  73. 
Sm(nmg),  74. 
Sojourn,  147,  155. 
Sonorous,  149. 
Sparagus,  87. 
Sparrow-grass,  84,  87- 

89. 
Spherical,    254. 
Splenetic,  153. 
Spoil(spile),  98,   100. 
Successor,  153. 
Sugar,  65. 
Suicide,  65. 
Superstition,  65. 
Sure,  65. 
Swing (ing),  73. 
Sword,  184. 

76 


INDEX    TO    WORDS 


Tapestry,  i8i. 
Theatre,  164. 
Thousand,  184. 
Toil,  loi,  102. 
Towards,  116. 
Trait,  229-231. 
Trepan,  156. 

Vase,  39-43,  228. 
Vault,  186. 
Venison,  181. 
Vermin  (varmint),  96. 
Vineyard,  254. 
Violent,  180. 


Walk,  1S6. 
When,  23,  194. 
Which,  194. 
Whig,  23,  194. 
While,  23. 
Wind,   107-109,    ] 

114. 
Wound,  107,  112. 

Yes,  176. 
Yet,  176. 
Yolk,  186. 

Zealous,  254. 


INDEX 


A,  pronounced  as  e, 
172-175. 

Accent,  shifting,  of, 
1 2 1 ;  in  words  of  two 
syllables,  147,  155- 
158;  in  words  of 
three  syllables,  127- 
129,  142,  145-147, 
148-155,  158,  164; 
in  words  of  four  or 
more  syllables,  122- 
127,   142-145. 

Addison,  joseph(i67  2- 
1719),  117. 

Ash,     John      (1724?- 

1779).  31.  ISO- 
Bacon,  Leonard 
(1802-1881),  235. 

Bailey,  Nathaniel  (died 
1742),  26,  48,  85, 
loi,  125,  137,  148, 
154,  157.  (164), 
169. 

Barclay,  James,  (fl. 
1774).  31- 


Bentley,  Richard 
(1662-1742),  261. 

'  Biglow  Papers,  The ' 
(Lowell's),  253. 

Boag,  John  (1775- 
1863), 151,  231. 

Buchanan,  James  (fi. 
1766),  31-35,  51, 
56,  no,  174,  175, 
230. 

Campbell,  Thomas 
(1777-1844),  162. 

'  Caution  to  Gentle- 
men Who  Use  Sher- 
idan's Dictionary, 
A,'  66. 

Century  Dictionary, 

135- 

Chambers's  Diction- 
ary, 231. 

Champion,  The  (Field- 
ing's), 170. 

Chapone,  Mrs.  Hester 
(1727-1801),  169. 

Chaucer,     Geoffrey 


279 


INDEX 


(died     1400),     189, 

218,   262. 
Chesterfield,    Philip 

Dormer     Stanhope, 

Earlof(i694-i773), 

115-119,   215. 
Churchill,  T.(fl.  1796), 

242. 
Classical  quantity,  as 

affecting        English 

pronunciation,     90, 

129-155- 
Colman ,  George  (1732- 

1794),  144. 
Cowley,     Abraham 

(1618-1667),  155. 
Craig,  John  (fl.  1850), 

152,   228. 
Critical  Review,  52  »., 

56  «.,  158. 
Cull,  Richard  (fl.  1863,) 

228. 

D     not     pronounced, 

183,   184. 
Delany,       Patrick 

(i685?-i768).  62. 
'  Deserted  Village.The ' 

(Goldsmith's),  191. 
Dickens, Charles(i  812- 

1870),  198. 
Dictionary: 

Ash's,  31. 

Bailey's,  26. 

Barclay's,  31. 

280 


Boag's,  151. 

Buchanan's,  31-34. 

Century,  135. 

Chambers's,  231. 

Comprehensive 
English,  228. 

Craig's,  152. 

Dyche's,  157. 

Encyclopasdic,  135. 

Historical.  (A  New 
English  Diction- 
ary on  Historical 
Principles,  found- 
ed mainly  on  the 
Materials  Collect- 
ed by  the  Philolog- 
ical Society.  Edit- 
ed by  Dr.  James 
A.  H.  Murray, 
and  others.  Ox- 
ford.)     23,  39,  95 

«•.  135- 
Imperial  (Ogilvie's; 
and  Annandale's) , 

135- 

International  (Web- 
ster's), 135. 

Johnson's,  26,  29. 

Johnstone's,  32. 

Kenrick's,  31,  51. 

Knowles's,  54,  77. 

Latham's,  142. 

Ogilvie's,  228. 

Perry's,  31,  56. 

Scott's,  57. 


INDEX 


Sheridan's,  53. 
Smart's,  77. 
Standard         (Funk 
and      Wagnall's) , 
^  13s.  251. 
Stormontns,   23, 

„  135- 

Walker's,  53,  68. 

Webster's,  54,  151. 
See  Internation- 
al. 

Worcester's,  54. 

Wright's,  152. 
Dryden,  John   (163 1- 

1700),  99,  loi,  144, 

155- 
Dyche,     Thomas     (fl. 

1725).  157- 

E    pronounced  as  a, 

94-98. 
E    pronounced  as  i, 

175.   179- 

Ellis,  Alexander  John 
(1814  -  1890),  54, 
218,  222,  227  —  231, 
236. 

Elphinston,  James 
(1721-1809),  41. 

Encyclopaedic  Dic- 
tionary (Cassell's) , 
23.  135.  231. 

Ephraimites,  3-6,   24. 

European  Magazine, 
44- 

2! 


'  Faerie  QuEENE, The' 

(Spenser's),  173  n. 
Fielding,  Henry  (i  707- 

1754)-  170.  171- 
Fox,     Charles    James 

(1749— 1806),  204. 
French  language,  Old, 

189,  192,  198,  199. 

Garrick,       David 

(1716-1779),  66, 67. 
George      IV.      (1762- 

1830),    119. 
Gileadites,  3-6,  238. 
Goldsmith,   Oliver 

(1728  -  1774),    162, 

191. 

H  not  pronounced, 
185,   191-201. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel 
(1804-1864),  37. 

'  Hints  for  Improve- 
ment in  the  Art  of 
Reading' (Walker's) , 

73- 

Historical  English  Dic- 
tionary. See  Dic- 
tionary. 

Hogg,  James  (1772- 
1835),  249. 

Illiterate  pronuncia- 
tion, 17,  18;  archaic 
character  of,  89-92. 


INDEX 


Imperial  Dictionary 
(Annandale's) ,     23, 

135.  231- 

International  Diction- 
ary, 135,  251. 

Italian  language, 
192. 

•Jealous  Wife,  The' 
(Colman's),  144. 

Johnson,  Samuel 
(1709  -  1784),  140, 
168,  214;  his  dic- 
tionary, 26,  29;  his 
pronunciation  of 
particular  words, 48, 
84,  116,  124,  125, 
137,  144,  148,  154, 
156,  157.  190,  229, 
247. 

Johnston,  William  (fl. 
1764),  32,  no. 

Jonson,  Ben  (1573?- 
1637),  199- 

'Julius  Csesar'  (Shake- 
speare's), 113. 

Kemble,  John  Philip 
(1757  -  1823),    119, 

154- 
Kenrick,    William 
(i725?-i779),    31, 

35.  43.   51.   52,   56. 
100,  102. 
Knowles,  James(i  759- 
2 


1840).    54,    77.    88. 
151,  209. 

L  not  pronounced, 
185-191. 

Landor,  Walter  Sav- 
age (1775  -  1864), 
140-145.   196- 

Latham,  Robert  Gor- 
don (1812  -  1888), 
142,  228,  229, 
231. 

London  pronuncia- 
tion, 2i6-2i8,  220- 
222. 

Love's  Labor's  Lost 
(Shakespeare's) , 
124. 

Lowell,  James  Russell 
(1819-1891),  253. 

Macaulay,  Thomas 
Babington  (1800- 
1859),  136,  137, 
140. 

Milton,  John  (1608- 
1674),  72,  90,  155, 
180,  225. 

Monthly  Review,  The, 
34- 

Nares,Robert(i753- 
1829),  41,  45.  75. 
loi,   118,  173,  160, 

248. 


INDEX 


Ogilvie,  John  (1797- 

1867),  228. 
Oi    pronounced    as    i, 

98-104. 
Oxford  Dictionary. 

See  Historical ,  under 

Dictionary. 

Palsgrave,     John 

(died  1554),  198. 
Pardon,    William    (fl. 

1735).  157-     ^ 
Parr,    Samuel    (1747- 

1825),    261. 
Pepys,  Samuel  (1633- 

1703),  86,  87. 
Perry,     William      (fl. 

1775).  31.  56,  58. 

Philological  Society  s 
dictionary.  5^^  His- 
torical, under  Dic- 
tionary. 

Pope,  Alexander 
(1688-1744),  98- 
100,  117,  190. 

'  Practical  Grammar  of 
English  Pronuncia- 
tion, A.'    (Smart's), 

79-  ,.     . 

Pronouncing  diction- 
aries, early  history 
of,   24-35,  49-76. 

Pronunciation  con- 
formed to  spelling, 
165-205;  its  univer- 


sality now  impossi- 
ble, 266-269. 

Proper  names,  pro- 
nunciation of,  161- 
163,   202—205. 

Provincial  pronuncia- 
tion,  17,   18. 

Rhyming  Dictionary 
(Walker's),  67-68. 

Richardson  Samuel, 
(1689-1761) ;  his'Sir 
Charles  Grandison,' 
91. 

Rogers,  Samuel  (i  763- 
185s),  129,  204. 

Ryme  as  indicating 
pronunciation,  98- 
102,  107—109,  262. 

Scenic    Annual,    The, 

162. 
Scott,       Sir      Walter 

(1771-1832),  182. 
Scott,      William      (fl. 

1786),  57- 
Shakespeare,  William 
(1564-1616),       113, 
123,  124,   125,   126, 
128,   144,  154,  218, 

233- 
Sheridan,    Thomas 
(1721-1788),  22,  31, 
38,   51.   53.  67,   74, 
77,  84,  86,  95,  III, 

83 


INDEX 


137.  174.  197.  214. 
241,  242;  account 
of,  30,  50,  59-66. 

Shibboleth,  4. 

Smart,  Benjamin 
Humphrey  (1786?- 
1872),  22,  38,  54, 
77,  79,  88,  209,  218, 
230. 

Spenser,    Edmund 

(i552?-i599).  173- 
Standard    Dictionary, 

The,  135,  251. 
Stormonth,    James 

(died    1882),    23, 

135' 
Swift,    Jonathan 
(1667-1745),    59, 
60,  61-64,  108, 114, 
190. 

T  not  pronounced, 
183,  184,  185. 

'  Tempest, The'  (Shake- 
speare's), 126. 

Thackeray,  WiUiam 
Makepeace  (181 1- 
1863),  47,  168,  171. 

Tooke,  John  Home 
(1736-1812),       140, 

143- 

'  Traveller,  The '  (Gold- 
smith's),  162. 

Trevelyan,  Sir  George 
Otto  (183S),  135. 


Trisyllables  pro- 
nounced as  dissyl- 
lables, 180. 

'Vanity  Fair' (Thack- 
eray's), 168. 

'Virginius'  (James 
Sheridan  Know- 
les's),  77. 

Vowel,  change  in  pro- 
nunciation of,  92, 
104,  107-114,  116- 
119,    172. 

W  not  pronounced, 
183,   184. 

Walker,  John  (1732- 
1807),  22,  30,  38, 
40,  41,  45,  46,  49, 
54,  84,  85,  88,  93, 
96,  103,  III,  112, 
114,  118,  137,  149- 
151,  152-155,  170, 
173,  174,  175,  176, 
177,  181,  191,  197, 
208,  209,  216,  225, 
230,  242,  246,  248, 
249;  account  of, 
30,  66-78;  author- 
ity of  his  dictionary, 

Webster,  Noah  (1758- 

1843).  54.  151.  170. 
171,  226,  235-237, 
246. 

84 


I 


INDEX 


Worcester,  Joseph  Em- 
erson (1784- 1865), 
54,  216,  218-222, 
237- 


Wri  ght, Thomas  (18 10- 
1877),  152. 

YoNGE,  Sir  William 
(died  1755),  215. 


THE    END 


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